HKU Legal Scholarship Blog: Trevor Wan

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”...

Friday, August 7, 2026

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.

Monday, June 22, 2026

Trevor Wan and Victor Li on A Confucian Virtue Ethics Approach to Medical Internship in Hong Kong (BMJ Journal of Medical Ethics Forum)

"A Confucian virtue ethics approach to medical internship in Hong Kong"

Trevor Wan and Victor Li

BMJ Journal of Medical Ethics Forum

Published online: January 2026

In Hong Kong, an internship, also called housemanship, is a 12-month period during which fresh medical graduates rotate across four departments in public hospitals and acquire hands-on clinical experience through daily care of patients. Yet this phase is fraught with inherent tension: interns, with relatively limited clinical experience, are held to the same, exacting standards of competence that bind fully licensed practitioners. High-profile intern mishaps over the years have brought this tension into sharp relief, including cases of mispositioned nasogastric feeding tubes being missed on X-rays that led to catastrophic feeding into the respiratory tract and subsequent aspiration pneumonia, errors in pre-transfusion blood cross-matching procedures, and delays in diagnosing acute myocardial infarction. These cases, which have elicited considerable public scrutiny and comment, most recently from the city’s health minister, reveal deeper systemic concerns regarding accountability, patient safety, and professional responsibility.

In examining these issues, we find that a Confucian virtue ethics approach is......

Please click here to read full text on BMJ Journal of Medical Ethics Forum.

Friday, February 13, 2026

Eric Ip and Trevor Wan et al on Harnessing the power of constitutional rights and legal frameworks to scale up public mental health implementation (The Lancet Psychiatry)

"Harnessing the power of constitutional rights and legal frameworks to scale up public mental health implementation"
Michael Ni, Candi Leung, Trevor Wan, Jonathan Campion, Neeraj Gill, Sandro Galea, Eric Ip
The Lancet Psychiatry
Published online: February 2026

Summary: Despite the existence of effective public mental health interventions, global coverage remains low. Only a minority of people with mental disorders receive treatment, far fewer receive interventions to address or prevent the associated impacts of mental disorders, and there is negligible coverage of interventions to prevent mental disorders or promote mental wellbeing and resilience. This implementation failure breaches the right to health and statutory legislation in some countries and results in population-scale preventable suffering, broad societal and individual impacts, and associated economic costs. Various reasons account for public mental health implementation failure, including insufficient policy and implementation according to population needs, and insufficient knowledge, resource, political will, and legal protection regarding the right to mental health. This Health Policy highlights a further reason for implementation failure is that only 12% of constitutions covering 3·5% of the world's population explicitly recognise a constitutional right to mental health, compared with 70% of constitutions recognising a constitutional right to health or physical health. A legal framework that includes explicit constitutional protection for mental health would mean the right to mental health would supersede all other laws. This would thereby provide a basis for legislation and support legal opportunities to challenge, advocate, and improve effective public mental health implementation by different sectors. This framework and associated opportunities would support the scale-up of implementation of cross-sector policy based on the public mental health needs of a population. Such a holistic, coordinated legal approach would support scaled-up coverage of public mental health interventions to treat and prevent mental disorders and promote mental wellbeing and resilience, as well as action to address inequities and protect the rights of those with mental disorders. Improved implementation would result in broad impacts across different sectors and associated economic benefits.

Friday, January 30, 2026

Anfield Tam, Hilary So, Trevor Wan, and Eric Ip on From Ashes to Accountability: The Hong Kong Basic Law’s Blueprint for the Common Good and the Rule of Law in the Wake of the Tai Po Fire (I-CONnect)

"From Ashes to Accountability: The Hong Kong Basic Law’s Blueprint for the Common Good and the Rule of Law in the Wake of the Tai Po Fire"
Anfield Tam (BSS (GL) & LLB graduate), Hilary So (JD graduate), Trevor Wan and Eric Ip
I-CONnect: Blog of the International Society of Public Law
Published online: January 2026

Introduction:

On November 26, 2025, a catastrophic fire tore through Wang Fuk Court, a 42-year old public housing estate in Tai Po District, Hong Kong. Ignited amid major renovations, the blaze, fueled by flammable scaffolding nets and polystyrene panels, spread swiftly across seven towers, raging for over 43 hours. It claimed 168 lives (including one firefighter), injured 79 others, and displaced thousands, making it the third-deadliest blaze in the 180-year span of modern Hong Kong history and more than twice as fatal as London’s 2017 Grenfell Tower fire.

Public grief mingled with solidarity: volunteers rallied with aid, memorials bloomed with tributes, yet fury grew over ignored warnings, substandard building materials, and oversight failures in the HK$330 million (US$42.4 million) renovation project. Occurring within Hong Kong’s evolving “one country, two systems” constitutional structure, shaped by new national security laws, electoral reforms for “governance by patriots”, and subdued politics post-2019 protests and COVID-19, the disaster has deepened distrust and probed the rule of law’s endurance. Drawing on Lord Bingham’s classic definition, the rule of law demands accessible, predictable laws that protect rights, restrain power, and ensure fair adjudication. These principles underpin the common good: shared conditions for safe, flourishing lives, enshrined in the Hong Kong Basic Law and the Bill of Rights, incorporating the ICCPR (Article 39). Yet, we argue in this post that translating these into vigilant governance remains elusive in Hong Kong.

The Tai Po fire emerges as a profound litmus test: Can Hong Kong’s public law truly shield vulnerable communities through consistent enforcement and impartial accountability? By linking Lord Bingham’s contemporary formulation of the rule of law to ancient Aristotelian notions of the common good, this analysis that follows bridges Anglo-American and continental jurisprudential traditions. For comparative public law scholars, it offers a compelling window into the resilience of common law amid tightening political pressures. Our analysis explores housing safety, inquiry and inquest mechanisms, Owners’ Corporations, and advocates steadfast adherence to Basic Law values to reclaim justice and the common good.

(Please click here to view full text on I-CONnect: Blog of the International Society of Public Law)

Monday, January 26, 2026

New issue of Hong Kong Law Journal (Vol. 55, Part 3 of 2025)

HONG KONG LAW JOURNAL

Vol. 55, Part 3 of 2025

Editor-in-Chief: Prof. Eric C Ip

Deputy Editor-in-Chief: Prof. Trevor Wan

Publisher: Sweet & Maxwell

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Articles

The Seventh Wave of Constitution-Making in Retrospect

Cheryl Saunders ...405

The Rule-of-Law Ideal: Architecture, Core and Commitments

Gerald J Postema...425

Breach of Fiduciary Duties and Constructive Trusts

The Hon William Gummow AC...435

Interdisciplinary Training and Research Impact in the Legal Academy

Abeer Sharma, Shuting Zhang and Ryan Whalen...441

Two Conceptions of Consideration: Reflections from England and Hong Kong

Alexander Georgiou...460

Directors’ Duty on Climate Change under English Law? Lessons from Sequana and ClientEarth

Min Yan...483

Improving Foreign Bank Branch Regulations to Pursue a Global Financial Hub: A Comparative Analysis of South Korea and the Global Regulations

Dong Won Ko and Ji Woong Seok...499

The Reconsideration of Territorial Link Requirement of Invisible Investment in ISDS: A Novel Analysis from Sociological Aspect

Fang Gu...535

Gleaning Pearls of DMA for Anti-monopoly Enforcement on Digital Platforms: A Chinese Perspective

Yujie Tong, Peicheng Wu and Charlie Xiao-chuan Weng...562

Revisiting the Proof of Foreign Law

Michael Chung...587

Foreign Government Inaction in US Trade Remedy Laws: When the Emperor is Frustrated by His Empire

Phuong Ngoc Tran and Jaemin Lee...608

Let’s Trade Data Like Stocks: China’s Data Exchange Regulation

Dinghao Zheng and Lerong Lu...634

Wednesday, December 24, 2025

Daisy Cheung and Trevor Wan on Hong Kong’s failed attempt at criminalising commercial surrogacy: Tale of a flawed legislative transplant (Medical Law International)

"Hong Kong’s failed attempt at criminalising commercial surrogacy: Tale of a flawed legislative transplant"
Daisy Cheung and Trevor Wan
Medical Law International
Published online: December 2025

Abstract: The article examines the failure of section 17 of Hong Kong’s Human Reproductive Technology Ordinance (Cap. 561) to criminalise commercial surrogacy, despite clear legislative intent to that effect. Through an in-depth analysis of the legislative debates and a series of illustrative vignettes, it demonstrates that section 17 only renders unlawful the act of making or receiving payments for negotiations leading to a commercial surrogacy arrangement, rather than the act of entering into such an arrangement itself. Such predicament stems from a flawed process of legislative transplantation. Section 17 was modelled on section 2(1) of the United Kingdom’s Surrogacy Arrangements Act 1985, the primary aim of which was to combat the proliferation of intermediary surrogacy agencies, instead of outlawing the practice of commercial surrogacy itself. Incomplete understanding of this legislative context likely led the drafters to misjudge the Surrogacy Arrangements Act 1985 as a suitable model for transplantation into the Hong Kong context. The article underscores the importance of careful legislative transplantation, and how crucial it is that law drafters and legislators be attuned to the original intent, domestic policy, and socio-legal context of the foreign rule being considered.

Monday, December 1, 2025

Trevor Wan on Globetrotting Advocates: Foreign Barristers in Hong Kong Courts (AJCL)

"Globetrotting Advocates: Foreign Barristers in Hong Kong Courts"
Trevor Wan
The American Journal of Comparative Law
Published Online: November 2025

Abstract: Foreign barristers, typically King’s Counsel from the United Kingdom, can apply for admission on an ad hoc basis to argue cases before the Hong Kong courts. This Article presents a comprehensive account of this regime of ad hoc admissions, which has not yet been systematically examined by scholars. Building upon, and simultaneously challenging, the theory of market control in the sociology of the legal profession, this Article conceptualizes the system as initially an equilibrium between market demand for high-caliber legal services and market control by the local Bar. The transfer of sovereignty in 1997 prompted a shift in the underlying logic of the regime away from market control to politics. Under the new Chinese Special Administrative Region, the regime became integral to preserving Hong Kong’s global standing. A bundle of political factors, tied to the notion of “foreignness,” began to dictate its trajectory. Furthermore, this Article offers an empirical panorama of ad hoc admissions, documenting the trends and patterns over time, profiles of the foreign barristers, types of cases for which they were engaged, clients involved, and reasons for opposing individual admission applications by the Hong Kong Bar Association, Secretary for Justice, and the Court of First Instance. Last but not least, this Article assesses the ongoing criticisms, politicization, and securitization of the regime, while probing its future in light of changes in the underlying political incentive structure.

Saturday, October 4, 2025

New Issue of Hong Kong Law Journal (Vol. 55, Part 1 of 2025)

HONG KONG LAW JOURNAL
Vol. 55, Part 1 of 2025

Editor-in-Chief: Prof. Eric C Ip
Deputy Editor-in-Chief: Prof. Trevor Wan

Publisher: Sweet & Maxwell

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Articles

Knowing Receipt of Shares in a Foreign Non-Common Law Company: Byers v Saudi National Bank
WMC Gummow AC...1

Whose Role? Judicial vs Legislative Protection of Minority Rights
Kemal Bokhary...5

In the Name of Public Interest: Challenging the Coroner’s Failure to Hold a Death Inquest in Hong Kong
Trevor TW Wan...11

Conditional Discharge, Statutory Interpretation and the Mental Health Review Tribunal
Daisy Cheung and Edward Lui...29

Courts and the Legislative Assembly in the Macau SAR Constitutional Crisis (2005–2009)
Luis WK Wong...47

Study on the Preventive Mechanisms for Food Safety Incidents in Hong Kong and Macao: Comparative Perspectives
Ting Zhou, Zimao Xie and Jingwen Chen...77

Can Musical Elements be Copyrightable? Rethinking the Boundaries of Copyright Protection
Xuan Shen...101

Stamp Duty in Hong Kong (1981–2024): The Evolution Waltz
Wilson Chow and Josiah Chung Ming Chan...101

Trevor Wan on In the Name of Public Interest: Challenging the Coroner’s Failure to Hold a Death Inquest in Hong Kong (HKLJ)

"In the Name of Public Interest: Challenging the Coroner’s Failure to Hold a Death Inquest in Hong Kong"
Trevor Wan
Hong Kong Law Journal, Vol. 55, Part 1 of 2025, pp.11 - 28

Abstract: Section 20 of the Hong Kong Coroners Ordinance (Cap 504) empowers the Secretary for Justice and any other properly interested persons to apply to the Court of First Instance for an order that a death inquest be held if “a coroner has failed to hold an inquest which ought to be held”. In Leung Shuk Ling and others v Coroner [2023] 4 HKLRD 264, the Court of Appeal for the first time outlined the proper approach to a s 20 application whereby the “public interest” is implicated. This article presents a critical analysis of the reasoning in Leung Shuk Ling, focusing on the legal and statutory basis of the “public interest” factor as well as the necessary limits that should be placed upon it.

Monday, January 6, 2025

Trevor Wan on Contesting Collateral Challenge: HKSAR v Chow Hang Tung (2024) 27 HKCFAR 71 (Judicial Review)

"Contesting Collateral Challenge: HKSAR v Chow Hang Tung (2024) 27 HKCFAR 71"
Trevor Wan
Judicial Review
Published Online: December 2024

Introduction:

1. A collateral challenge exposes to legal scrutiny a public law act or decision in proceedings the primary object of which is not to impugn the validity of that act or decision. The public law challenge, rather, is ‘collateral’, ‘indirect’, or ‘incidental’ to the main issue under determination, which may be the liability or guilt of the defendant. As a collateral challenge is asserted outside the parameters of conventional judicial review, it is neither subject to nor encumbered by the procedural peculiarities that underpin the latter, thus rendering it an ‘exception’ to the well-recognised rule of procedural exclusivity in O’Reilly v Mackman. In the criminal context, a collateral challenge typically contests a public law act, the lawfulness of which constitutes an essential ingredient of the offence with which the defendant is charged, relying on for example the familiar grounds of illegality, irrationality, and procedural impropriety. If successful, the collateral challenge will undermine the prosecution’s case and potentially lead to an acquittal.

2. The doctrine of collateral challenge was recently considered by the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal (CFA), the apex court of the jurisdiction, in HKSAR v Chow Hang Tung. In a split decision by a narrow margin of three-to-two, a majority of the CFA reaffirmed the principles governing the availability of collateral challenge in criminal proceedings laid down in R v Wicks and Boddington v British Transport Police, which are rooted in statutory interpretation. Furthermore, the CFA explicitly recognised a discrete category of collateral challenge, where the challenge stems not from statutory non-compliance or conventional public law grounds (i.e. ordinary collateral challenge), but incompatibility with constitutional provisions in the Basic Law and Hong Kong Bill of Rights, the Special Administrative Region’s statutory charter of rights incorporating the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (i.e. constitutional collateral challenge).

3. While the defendant in the end fell short of escaping conviction, the judgment...

(Click here to read the full article)

Wednesday, October 30, 2024

Trevor Wan on Unshackling from Shadows of the Anisminic Orthodoxy: Reconceptualising Approaches to Ouster Clauses in Hong Kong (AsJCL)

"Unshackling from Shadows of the Anisminic Orthodoxy: Reconceptualising Approaches to Ouster Clauses in Hong Kong"
Trevor Wan
Asian Journal of Comparative Law, First View, pp. 1 - 27
Published online: October 2024

Abstract: Ouster clauses have perennially borne the mantle of a ‘litigation minefield’, where clashes between legislative and judicial powers unfold in open fora. Recent jurisprudential advancements in the United Kingdom and Singapore demonstrate how judicial approaches to ouster clauses can evolve in the face of constitutional developments. Hong Kong has, however, remained muted while these jurisprudential advancements bear fruit in other parts of the common law world, notwithstanding the fact that its constitutional framework, umpired by the Basic Law, has been in existence for over twenty-five years. This article argues for the need to reconceptualise approaches to ouster clauses in Hong Kong, grounded firmly in its post-1997 constitutional framework. Drawing on comparative jurisprudence, it presents a spectrum of approaches, animated by the dynamic interplay between various ‘macrocontextual’ and ‘microcontextual’ factors, ranging from a localised version of Anisminic, remedial interpretation, and invalidation of ouster clauses on the grounds that they impermissibly affront the constitutional right of access to courts, allocation of judicial power, and constitutional supremacy.

Wednesday, September 18, 2024

New Issue of Asia-Pacific Journal on Human Rights and the Law (Volume 25, Issue 2, August 2024)

ASIA-PACIFIC JOURNAL ON HUMAN RIGHTS AND THE LAW

Editor-in-Chief: Simon NM Young

Publisher: Brill, Leiden

2024, Volume 25, Issue 2

Table of Contents

Revisiting State Sovereignty Interpretation in Managing Rohingya Refugee Arrivals Amid the covid-19 Pandemic in Indonesia

Author: Natalia Yeti Puspita

Pages: 127–152

Online Publication Date: 16 Aug 2024

The Constitutional Right to Compensation for Violation of Fundamental Rights: An Analysis of Recent Developments in India

Author: Aman Kumar Sharma and Saroj Bohra

Pages: 153–172
Online Publication Date: 16 Aug 2024

Protection of Factually Innocent as a New Narrative to Abolish the Death Penalty in Malaysia

Author: Mohd Munzil Muhamad, Wong Hua Siong, and Baraneetharan Kishur Kumar

Pages: 173–190
Online Publication Date: 16 Aug 2024

Remoulding Coroner’s Inquests in Hong Kong through the Right to Life

Author: Trevor T. W. Wan

Pages: 191–214
Online Publication Date: 16 Aug 2024

Friday, September 13, 2024

HKU Law Welcomes Prof. Trevor Wan

Welcome to Prof. Trevor Wan, who joins the Faculty of Law as an Assistant Professor.

Trevor T. W. Wan is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Law, The University of Hong Kong (HKU), where he serves as Deputy Director of the Bachelor of Social Sciences (Government and Laws) and Bachelor of Laws dual degree programme.

His research harnesses interdisciplinary approaches drawn mainly from political science, among other fields, to study comparative constitutional and administrative law, coronial law and forensic jurisprudence. His work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in leading peer-reviewed periodicals including the International Journal of Constitutional Law, Public Law, German Law Journal, Judicial Review, Asian Journal of Comparative Law, Statute Law Review, and Journal of Criminal Law.

Born and raised in Hong Kong, Trevor holds an LL.M. from Harvard Law School where he was the Hong Kong Jockey Club Fellow, and an LL.B. and a B.Soc.Sc. in Government and Laws from HKU, both with First Class Honours. He is a member of the International Society of Public Law and the British Institute of International and Comparative Law. He currently serves as an Associate Editor of the Hong Kong Law Journal, the flagship faculty journal of HKU Law.

Trevor's Research areas include:

Comparative Constitutional Law
Comparative Administrative Law
Coronial Law