New issue of Hong Kong Law Journal (Vol. 56, Part 1 of 2026)

HONG KONG LAW JOURNAL

Vol. 56, Part 1 of 2026

Editor-in-Chief: Prof. Eric C Ip

Deputy Editor-in-Chief: Prof. Trevor Wan

Publisher: Sweet & Maxwell

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Articles

Purposive, Holistic and Contextual

Kemal Bokhary...1

Discretion in the Legal System: A Roundtable Exchange (with Simon Young and Amanda  Whitford et al)

Trevor T W Wan...9

Beyond 4–18: Gendered Labour Precarity and the Limits of Law Reform in Hong Kong

Darcy Davison-Roberts, Yu Yiran and Li Jiawei...21

Regulating Targeted Advertising Through the Informed Consent Model

Luo Jiakun...55

Symposium: Trust, Wealth Management, and Philanthropy

Reimagining Charity Law

Matthew Harding...89

For-Profit Philanthropic Innovation in the US

Dana Brakman Reiser...107

Offshore Philanthropy: A Critical Look at Family Offices using Hybrid Trusts

Tang Hang Wu...129

Perpetual Charitable Trusts and Artificial Intelligence

Ian Murray...151

Treatise Writing Technique and a Problem in English Charitable Donation Law

John Picton...181

Regulating Trustee Investment in the Pacific Rim

M Scott Donald...199

Data Charitable Trusts: Balancing Privacy and Sharing Value in Healthcare Data Governance

Yuxin Zhao...229

Planning with Purpose: Purpose Trusts, Charitable Gifts, and Business Succession Planning

Susan Gary...265

The Nature of Recipients in Charitable Trusts and Discretionary Trusts

Zhicheng Wu and Dongying Ye...295

Resilience and Social Justice: Rethinking Responses to Southeast Asia’s Substandard Housing Crisis

Rebecca Lee and Jodi Gardner...313

Trevor Wan on Discretion in the Legal System: A Roundtable Exchange (with Simon Young and Amanda Whitford et al) (HKLJ)

"Discretion in the Legal System: A Roundtable Exchange (with Simon Young and Amanda  Whitfort et al)"
Trevor Wan
Hong Kong Law Journal, Vol. 56, Part 1 of 2026, pp.9 - 20

    Discretion is an unavoidable feature in any functional legal system. Cognitive limitations, due in no small part to the heterogeneity and unpredictability of earthly circumstances, prevent both the common law judge and the legislator from developing a comprehensive, military-grade operational manual standardising responses to every conceivable contingency. While some scholars and jurists regard discretion as a virtue, others bemoan it as a vice, a source of arbitrariness or inconsistency. Nevertheless, across the debate there is broad agreement on one point: discretion must be subject to some forms of meaningful control. In Stradling v Morgan, the Court of Exchequer said that the intention of the legislature is always taken according to what is consonant to reason and good discretion. In Scott v Scott, Lord Shaw of Dunfermline said that “[t]o remit the maintenance of constitutional right to the region of judicial discretion is to shift the foundations of freedom from the rock to the sand”. That goes to the heart of what the United States Supreme Court referred to in Marbury v Madison as “a government of laws and not of men”...

Darcy Lynn Davison-Roberts et al on Beyond 4–18: Gendered Labour Precarity and the Limits of Law Reform in Hong Kong (HKLJ)

"Beyond 4–18: Gendered Labour Precarity and the Limits of Law Reform in Hong Kong"
Darcy Davison-Roberts, Yu Yiran and Li Jiawei
Hong Kong Law Journal, Vol. 56, Part 1 of 2026, pp.21 - 54

Abstract: This paper critically examines Hong Kong’s continuous contract requirement under the Employment Ordinance (Cap 57), which conditions eligibility for employment benefits and protections on meeting prescribed minimum hours over a four-week period. This threshold, known as the 4–18 Rule, requires at least 18 hours of work per week for the same employer over four consecutive weeks. In June 2025, the Legislative Council enacted the Employment (Amendment) Ordinance 2025, which replaced the 4–18 Rule with a dual threshold from 18 January 2026. Under the amendment, employees may qualify as being continuously employed by either working 17 hours of work per week over consecutive four weeks or a cumulative total of 68 hours within the same period (the 4–17–68 Rule). Drawing on qualitative legal analysis and empirical data, this paper argues that the 4–18 Rule creates a situation of employment precarity, disproportionately affects women, and facilitates employer-driven scheduling strategies that exclude workers from key statutory protections and benefits. Judicial interpretation remains constrained, with courts unable to remedy employer avoidance in the absence of statutory reform. This paper further argues that the 4–17–68 Rule reform constitutes only a numerical adjustment and fails to address the structural, legal, and institutional roots of exclusion that characterise the 4–18 Rule. Drawing on international models, particularly from Singapore, Australia, and the UK, the paper advocates for substantive legislative amendments, including anti-avoidance provisions and a proportional entitlement system. Without these, the revised 4–17–68 Rule will preserve, rather than remedy, systemic precarity and gender inequality in statutory employment benefits and protections.

Luo Jiakun on Regulating Targeted Advertising Through the Informed Consent Model (HKLJ)

"Regulating Targeted Advertising Through the Informed Consent Model"
Luo Jiakun (LLM TIPL 2025)
Hong Kong Law Journal, Vol. 56, Part 1 of 2026, pp.55 - 88

Abstract: The rise of targeted advertising, powered by algorithmic technologies and extensive personal data collection, has significantly transformed the digital landscape. While such practices generate considerable economic benefits, they also pose critical risks to the protection of personal information. The informed consent model, derived initially from medical ethics and integrated into contemporary data protection laws, aims to safeguard individuals’ informational self-determination by ensuring transparency, voluntariness, and genuine user control. This article critically examines the implementation of the informed consent framework in different jurisdictions and an empirical audit of privacy policies from 25 prominent Chinese platforms. The research identifies substantial gaps between regulatory ambitions and actual practices, including the erosion of users’ right to be informed, systemic distortion of consent through manipulative interfaces, and impeded withdrawal mechanisms. To bridge these gaps, this article proposes targeted reforms emphasising user-centric transparency, rigorous consent standards, and accessible withdrawal mechanisms. The findings underscore the necessity of shifting from formal compliance to substantive user empowerment to achieve meaningful personal information protection.

Rebecca Lee and Jodi Gardner on Resilience and Social Justice: Rethinking Responses to Southeast Asia’s Substandard Housing Crisis (HKLJ)

"Resilience and Social Justice: Rethinking Responses to Southeast Asia’s Substandard Housing Crisis"
Rebecca Lee and Jodi Gardner
Hong Kong Law Journal, Vol. 56, Part 1 of 2026, pp.313 - 331

Abstract: Rapid urbanisation, speculative land practices and inadequate governance have driven a substandard housing crisis across Southeast Asia, leaving marginalised populations in informal and insecure dwellings. This article proposes a framework that combines Resilient Property Theory (RPT) and the social minimum to address these challenges. While the social minimum establishes enforceable rights to adequate, secure housing grounded in social justice, RPT emphasises adaptive, resilient governance through stakeholder engagement and institutional flexibility. Using Hong Kong as a case study, we evaluate recent housing policies against this integrated framework, illustrating how it can reimagine housing governance and offer a pathway for Southeast Asian governments to develop inclusive, rights-based and adaptable responses to substandard housing.

HKU Law Welcomes Prof. Yu Fan

Welcome to Prof. Yu Fan, who joins the Faculty of Law as an Assistant Professor.

Yu is a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Data, AI & Law at the University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law and School of Computing and Data Science. He is also a PhD candidate in Legal AI at ETH Zurich and an associated researcher at the ETH AI Center. His research lies at the intersection of law, computational social science, machine learning, natural language processing, and data science. His work has been published at leading AI and NLP venues, including the International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP), and Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (EACL). Yu holds a Master of Arts in Sociology from Freie Universität Berlin, with a focus on computational social science; a Professional Certificate in Artificial Intelligence from Stanford University; and a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy and Sociology from Universität Bielefeld, with a focus on theoretical philosophy.

Research Areas:

• Legal AI
• Natural language processing
• Computational social science
• AI for social good

Adrian Mak and Wilson Lui on Agentic AI and International Arbitration: A Three-Tier Taxonomy and Model Agentic AI Protocol (Journal of AI Law and Regulation)

“Agentic AI and International Arbitration: A Three-Tier Taxonomy and Model Agentic AI Protocol”
Adrian Mak (BSocSc(Govt&Laws)&LLB 2019; PCLL 2020) and Wilson Lui (Research Fellow, Centre for Private Law)
Journal of AI Law and Regulation, Volume 3, Issue 2, pp. 138–151
Published online: June 2026

Abstract: The rapid evolution from generative to agentic artificial intelligence (AI) presents both transformative opportunities and novel enforcement risks for international arbitration. Whereas ordinary prompt-response use of generative AI is largely reactive, agentic AI combines generative models with planning, persistent memory, tool use, and autonomous task execution, operating through multi-step workflows with minimal human oversight at each step. This article introduces a three-tier taxonomy: (1) Agent-Assisted, (2) Agent-Supported, and (3) Agent-Decided—to classify the deployment of agentic AI across the arbitral lifecycle, from conflict checks and procedural administration to deliberation and award drafting. It maps the principal enforcement risks under the United Nations Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards 1958 (the New York Convention), particularly Articles V(1)(b), V(1)(d), and V(2)(b), and analyses the regulatory implications of the EU AI Act for high-risk AI systems deployed in dispute resolution. It situates the taxonomy against the principal existing AI-in-arbitration instruments—the SVAMC Guidelines and the CIArb Guideline—and argues that agentic AI requires a more granular, autonomy-based governance model than general AI guidance provides. To address the governance gap, the article proposes a Model Agentic AI Protocol structured around three pillars: (1) Disclosure, (2) Trajectory Logging, and (3) Human Certification—complemented by a technical toolkit comprising arbitration-specific benchmarks, mechanistic interpretability, adversarial robustness testing, and cognitive calibration techniques.

Wilson Lui on Conflict of Laws

“Conflict of Laws”
Halsbury’s Laws of Hong Kong (2nd Edition)
Volume 16, 2026 Reissue, pp. 63–169
LexisNexis
Wilson Lui (Research Fellow, Centre for Private Law)

The 2026 Reissue is a substantial overhaul of the previous edition, featuring a restructured framework that better reflects the doctrinal architecture of conflict of laws (also known as private international law) as practised in Hong Kong today. The 2026 Reissue incorporates extensive new case law developments and provides in-depth coverage of significant statutory provisions and reforms, most notably the enactment and operation of various statutes regarding the recognition and enforcement of judgments between the Chinese Mainland and Hong Kong (Cap 597, Cap 639, and Cap 645). The 2026 Reissue also offers substantial new analysis and original insights across a range of core conflict of laws topics, including jurisdiction, choice of law, and the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments, situating Hong Kong's private international law regime within broader comparative and regional contexts. It will serve as a valuable resource for practitioners, academics, and students navigating the evolving landscape of cross-border legal disputes in Hong Kong.

Welcome the new Global Academic Fellow Dr Xiangyi Ren!

Welcome to Dr Xiangyi Ren who joined the Faculty of Law as a Global Academic Fellow. Dr. Xiangyi (Tami) Ren is a socio-legal scholar studying legal and policy change in Mainland China. Her research examines how legal knowledge is produced, circulated, and transformed through the interaction between court operations and lawmaking processes. Her current research examines the operation of specialized tribunals and courts, public interest litigation regimes, and how specialized judicial institutions reshape governance in China. A common intellectual thread of her work is analyzing how legal institutions mediate interactions among legal, technical, and political knowledge, as well as investigating how individuals and organizations construct, interpret, and deploy legal rules in practice.

Xiangyi received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Chicago, an MSc in Politics of China from SOAS University of London, and a B.A. in Political Science and International Studies from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She was awarded the 2025 Surrency Prize by the American Society for Legal History. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Contemporary China, Law and History Review, and China Law and Society Review. Prior to joining the University of Hong Kong as a Global Academic Fellow, she served as a Social Sciences Teaching Fellow at the University of Chicago.

Welcome the new Global Academic Fellow Dr Marianne Von Blomberg!

Welcome to Dr Marianne Von Blomberg who joined the Faculty of Law as a Global Academic Fellow. Marianne von Blomberg is a Global Academic Fellow (postdoctoral researcher) at the Law and Technology Centre of the University of Hong Kong. She also participates in a research project on corporate social responsibility regimes and techno-regulation in Europe and China at the Bern University of Applied Sciences. Her work uses qualitative empirical methods to examine how public regulation of and through digital technologies evolves across China and the European Union.

Her research focuses on social credit systems and related forms of assessment-based governance in China and beyond, as well as on techno-orientalism in media and policy discourse. In her current work, she expands her work on regulation and governance to include processes of technical standardization as key sites where regulatory logics are developed and negotiated.

She completed her PhD at the University of Cologne, funded by the German Academic Scholarship Foundation and the Fritz Thyssen Foundation. The project investigated how evolving social credit systems strengthen, weaken and transform the law in China and is grounded in three years of fieldwork and analyses of official documents.  Her focus on modes of public regulation and their transformation has led her to observe the processes and fora of technical standardization in her postdoctoral work.

Beyond research, Marianne contributes to public and policy-facing engagement on PRC law in Europe through advising EU officials, teaching, and serving as the editor of the blog of the European Chinese Law Studies Association (ecls.eu), and co-organizing its conferences and summer schools. Marianne holds an LL.M. from Zhejiang University in Hangzhou and a BA in Communication and Cultural Studies from Zeppelin University in Friedrichshafen. She has been a visiting scholar at the City University of Hong Kong School of Law and has professional experience with several news outlets, the Jingling Law Firm (criminal defense), the Volkswagen Group, and the German Embassy in Ottawa.

Benjamin Chen et al on Mitigating the Judicial Human–AI Fairness Gap (Journal of Legal Analysis)

"Mitigating the judicial human–AI fairness gap"
Benjamin Chen, Yoan Hermstrüwer, Pascal Langenbach, Alexander Stremitzer, Kevin Tobia
Journal of Legal Analysis, Volume 18, Issue 1, 2026, Pages 207–242
Published online: July 2026

Abstract: Machine adjudication is perceived as less fair than human judging. We study whether hybrid procedures, in which a human consults an algorithmic recommendation but retains final authority, mitigate this human-AI fairness gap. In two experiments (⁠N = 7,651⁠), participants evaluate sentencing, bail, and arbitration decisions made by a human, an algorithm, or a human reviewing an algorithmic recommendation. The hybrid procedure eliminates the gap even when human scrutiny is minimal. The effect is complete among White and conservative participants but partial among Black liberals. Insensitivity to review intensity raises the risk of human-washing: nominal oversight may legitimize substantively flawed algorithmic processes.

Craig Purshouse on Rethinking negligence liability for ‘pure psychiatric damage’: an analogy with assault (Legal Studies)

"Rethinking negligence liability for ‘pure psychiatric damage’: an analogy with assault"
Craig Purshouse
Legal Studies
Published online: July 2026

Abstract: Orthodox accounts of negligence liability for ‘pure psychiatric damage’ view it as protecting the claimants’ interest in their psychiatric health and often attack English law’s restrictive duty of care rules for inadequately safeguarding this right. This paper challenges this widespread consensus by presenting and evaluating an alternative explanatory rationale. Drawing an analogy between the ‘paradigm case’ of primary victims and the tort of assault, the crux of the argument is that the interest protected in ‘accident’ cases is in avoiding anticipated immediate physical violence but the law sometimes extends the protection of this right to secondary victims in order to preserve the law’s legitimacy. From this perspective, several intractable doctrinal problems that have long troubled adherents to the orthodox view become explicable.

New book by Julius Yam on Judging for Democracy (Cambridge University Press)

Judging for Democracy: Principles and Strategies in Hybrid Regimes
Julius Yam
Cambridge University Press
Published in July 2026
276 pp.

Book description: This book examines how constitutional courts can sustainably contribute to advancing democratic norms in hybrid regimes, i.e. regimes that are neither fully democratic nor fully authoritarian. Using a comparative approach analysing cases from across the globe, particularly from Hong Kong, Pakistan, and Uganda, Julius Yam makes the case that courts can assume a democracy-enhancing role in hybrid regimes. The book reveals the challenges faced by courts in performing such a role. It also proposes an adjudicative framework that systematically integrates principled judging with judicial strategy, and suggests nonadjudicative techniques that judges can adopt to reinforce democracy. While theoretical in substance, this book is informed by empirical studies and draws on a wide range of disciplines, including law, political science, sociology, and psychology. The book will be a key resource to judges, academics, and practitioners who are interested in the study of democracy and courts. Its insights are particularly pertinent in an age of democratic backsliding and resurgence of authoritarianism. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

Trevor Wan on Anchoring Proportionality in China (International Journal of Constitutional Law)

"Anchoring Proportionality in China"
Trevor Wan
International Journal of Constitutional Law
Published online: July 2026

Abstract: Proportionality, the lingua franca of rights adjudication across the globe, is not a lost cause in China. It has attained a modest jurisprudential, epistemic, and discursive presence, with proportionality-resembling formulations scattered across statutes and judicial decisions. An opportunity structure has emerged in favor of proportionality’s expansion into the domain of personality rights adjudication under the Civil Code of 2021—a “surrogate” of constitutional rights review. This opportunity structure is enabled by a semi-autonomous private law sphere lodged within China’s dual state, the structure of the Civil Code, which delegates to judges the authority to adopt a stable criterion to assess the scope of personality right provisions and their limits, and the proactive agency of prominent publicists and judges who have advocated for, and experimented with, proportionality in real cases. Despite such impetus, anchoring proportionality remains constrained by two “micro-level” obstacles in everyday judicial praxis, which are the sheer size of the judiciary and truncated judgment-writing practice. Ultimately, the fate of proportionality in China hinges on the extent to which the party-state tolerates the evolution of its private law in a rights-protective direction, which in turn bespeaks the future of the Chinese legal system.

HKU Law Welcomes Prof. Michael Tsimplis

Welcome to Prof. Michael Tsimplis, who joins the Faculty of Law as a Professor.

Professor Michael (Mikis) Tsimplis has been with the Faculty of Law since July 2026. Before joining HKU Mikis worked for CityU (2018-2026). Before 2018 Mikis worked in various academic and leadership positions for the University of Southampton and before that for the UK Natural Environment Research Council. He has taught various courses, including Admiralty Law, Admiralty Enforcement, Charterparties, Bills of Lading, Energy and Environment Law, Law of International Sales, Legal Concepts, Insurance Law, Private International Law, Commercial Contracts, Legal Concepts Law of the Marine Environment in academic and professional courses around the world. Mikis undertakes research in marine, maritime, commercial, and environmental law as well as keeping an interest in oceanography and environmental science. He has led and contributed to various international and interdisciplinary projects and has published mainly in law, oceanography and sea level rise, with extensive interdisciplinary collaborations. He has been involved in the quality assessment and accreditation of university departments and the evaluation of research proposals for national and international bodies. 

Ryan Whalen et al on Measuring Human Contribution in AI-Assisted Content Generation

"Measuring Human Contribution in AI-Assisted Content Generation"
Yueqi Xie, Tao Qi, Jingwei Yi, Xiyuan Yang, Ryan Whalen, Junming Huang, Qian Ding, Yu Xie, Xing Xie, Fangzhao Wu
ACL Anthology
Published online: July 2026

Abstract: With the growing prevalence of generative AI, an increasing amount of content is no longer exclusively generated by humans but by generative AI models with human guidance. This shift presents notable challenges for the delineation of originality due to the varying degrees of human contribution in AI-assisted works. This study raises the research question of measuring human contribution in AI-assisted content generation and introduces a framework to address this question that is grounded in information theory. By calculating mutual information between human input and AI-assisted output relative to self-information of AI-assisted output, we quantify the proportional information contribution of humans in content generation. Our experimental results demonstrate that the proposed measure effectively discriminates between varying degrees of human contribution across multiple creative domains. To further enhance real-world applicability, we extend the framework to estimate the minimal necessary human contribution for any text without requiring human input and validate its effectiveness. We hope that this work lays a foundation for measuring human contributions in AI-assisted content generation in the era of generative AI.

Benjamin Chen and Xinyu Xie on The Alignment Target Problem: Divergent Moral Judgments of Humans, AI Systems, and Their Designers (FAccT '26)

"The Alignment Target Problem: Divergent Moral Judgments of Humans, AI Systems, and Their Designers"
Benjamin Chen, Xinyu Xie (PhD Candidate)
ACM FAccT '26
Published online: June 2026

Abstract: The project of aligning machine behavior with human values raises a basic problem: whose moral expectations should guide AI decision-making? Much alignment research assumes that the appropriate benchmark is how humans themselves would act in a given situation. Studies of agent-type value forks challenge this assumption by showing that people do not always judge humans and AI systems identically. This paper extends that challenge by examining two further possibilities: first, that evaluations of AI behavior change when its human origins are made visible; and second, that people judge the humans who program AI systems differently from either the machines or the human actors they are compared against. An experiment with 1,002 U.S. adults measured moral judgments in a runaway mine train scenario, varying the subject of evaluation across four conditions: a repairman, a repair robot, a repair robot programmed by company engineers, and company engineers programming a repair robot. We find no significant difference in evaluations of the repairman and the robot. However, judgments shifted substantially when the robot's actions were described as the product of human design. Participants exhibited markedly more deontological, rule-based reasoning when evaluating either the programmed robot or the engineers who programmed it, suggesting that rendering human agency visible activates heightened moral constraints. These findings indicate that people may evaluate humans, AI systems acting in the same situation, and the humans who design them in meaningfully different ways. The fact that these evaluations do not necessarily converge gives rise to the alignment target problem: which normative target should guide the development of artificial moral agents in high-stakes domains, and whether these plural judgments can be reconciled within a coherent account of value alignment.

Congratulations to Professor Ying Xia and Professor Ying Zhu!

Congratulations to Prof. Ying Xia and Prof. Ying Zhu on their promotion to Associate Professor! 

Prof. Xia is an interdisciplinary scholar whose work focuses on environmental governance and developmental studies, taking a socio-legal approach. She is a leading contributor to the rapidly growing field of environmental governance in China. To read more about Prof. Xia's research and publications, click here.

Prof. Zhu is a distinguished legal scholar specialising in trade and investment, in particular sanctions, compliance, and other cutting-edge fields, working closely with policy-makers at both the national and international levels. To read more about Prof. Zhu's research and publications, click here.

Prof. Ying Xia and Prof. Ying Zhu are valuable members of our Faculty, and this promotion is a well-deserved recognition of their contributions.

Congratulations to HKU Law Student Finalists in Law Reform Essay Competition 2026

Congratulations to the 6 HKU Law student finalists in this year's Law Reform Essay Competition organised by the Law Reform Commission of Hong Kong. The topic was 'The legal doctrines of maintenance and champerty, developed some 700 years ago, still apply to most litigation in Hong Kong. Should these doctrines be reformed in relation to such litigation? If so, why and how? If not, why not? ' The six students are

• Hui Chun Tak, Chezkel (Bachelor of Social Sciences (Government and Laws) and Bachelor of Laws (Year 4)),
• Jennifer Peng Jiayi (Bachelor of Laws (Year 2)),
• Shan Siyuan (Bachelor of Laws (Year 2)),
• Wang Zhiyu (Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Laws (Year 3)),
• Xiong Xiao Meng, Lauren (Bachelor of Social Sciences (Government and Laws) and Bachelor of Laws (Year 3)) and
• Yu Tung Ching (Postgraduate Certificate in Laws)

All of their essays can be downloaded here.

RGC Awards $5 Million in Research Funding to HKU Law 2026/27

Congratulations to our eight colleagues who were successful in the 2026-2027 round of research grant funding by Hong Kong's Research Grants Council (RGC). Seven General Research Fund (GRF) projects were funded to evaluate the Infrastructure Consultation in the Asia Pacific; to explore Human-AI Interaction in Legal Processes; to regulate Donation-Based Crowdfunding Platforms in China; to assess how can AI help Debt Mediation; to analyse Damage in Hong Kong's Law of Negligence; to examine the role of corporate law in advancing ESG in China; to evaluate the structured issues of FILs and identifying ways to minimize FILs’ impact on citizens’ rights. One Early Career Scheme (ECS) project was funded to evaluate the Necessity and Feasibility of a Sentencing Council in Hong Kong. The details of the new funded projects are as follows:

GRF:
Professor Shahla Ali
Infrastructure Consultation in the Asia Pacific, HK$827,180

Professor Benjamin Chen
Artificially Enhanced Justice: An Exploration of Human-AI Interaction in Legal Processes, HK$777,600

Professor Hui Jing
Regulating Donation-Based Crowdfunding Platforms in China: Challenges and Future Directions, HK$633,900

Professor John Liu
Can Artificial Intelligence Help Debt Mediation? A Field Experiment, HK$650,000

Professor Craig Purshouse
Damage in Hong Kong's Law of Negligence, HK$147,500

Professor James Zeng
Corporate Law and ESG in China, HK$816,000

Dr. Han Zhu
Rule of Law or Rule of Values? A Critical Comparative Analysis of Foreign Influence Laws, HK$549,240

ECS:
Professor Florence Lee
Evaluating the Necessity and Feasibility of a Sentencing Council in Hong Kong: Lessons from Comparative Perspectives, HK$599,984