New Edition by Eric Ip: Law and Justice in Hong Kong: Principles of the Legal System (4th Edition) (Sweet & Maxwell)

Law and Justice in Hong Kong: Principles of the Legal System (4thEdition)
Eric Ip
Sweet & Maxwell
Published in September 2022
507 pp.

'This book, Law and Justice in Hong Kong, has become an indispensable reference for anyone interested in or working with the Hong Kong legal system.'

Madam Justice Beverley McLachlin PC, CC, CStJ, Non–Permanent Judge of the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal, Chief Justice of Canada (2000–2017)

Thoroughly rewritten and updated, the fourth edition of Law and Justice in Hong Kong continues to offer readers a comprehensive account of the legal system of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China—the only common law jurisdiction in East Asia. Featuring discussions of the latest case law, the COVID-19 pandemic, and watershed legal events in recent years, it enables readers to appreciate the fundamental principles of law and the administration of justice that drove Hong Kong’s historic transition from a fishing settlement into a leading international financial centre over the course of nearly two centuries. 

An essential text for students studying Legal System and Legal Research, this book is useful also to legal practitioners, jurists, and general readers, both in Hong Kong and abroad, who find interest in the spectacle of an internationalised common law system operating under the sovereignty of the world’s most powerful socialist state.

New Book: Johannes Chan's Paths of Justice in Chinese translation << 眾裡尋她：公義在香港 >> with the Author's Notes

<<眾裏尋她:
公義在香港>>
(Paths of Justice) in Chinese translation
陳文敏 (Johannes Chan) 著

HKU Press
Law, Hong Kong
June 2021
264 pp.

the Author's Notes: The English version has been very popular and has received many positive feedbacks and book reviews. It has taken the author Johannes Chan a few years to do the translation to publish the Chinese version so that it could reach an even wider readership in the community. As the author Johannes Chan translated it himself, he has the freedom not to be bound by the original text. Thus, some chapters have been updated; some chapters have been expanded to provide more background or explanation, and yet they try to preserve the legal arguments in the English version so as to give readers a good sense of how court cases are argued and how our courts deal with these matters. The author Johannes Chan has also replaced the original Chapter 14 by a new Chapter 14 as the original chapter may be too technical. The new chapter is about prison visit, which was a case taken up by our legal clinic.

      Margaret Ng translated the first draft of Chapters 17, 18, 19 and 21.

     There are too many updates and expansions throughout the book. More update is done in Chapter 1 (notably from pp. 19-22), which captured what happened since the publication of the English edition. Many other changes are due to the fact that English is a more concise language. When it is translated into Chinese, the author Johannes Chan finds it necessary to provide more explanation. In some cases, the author Johannes Chan just tried to re-write the original English version so that it may read better. Thus, the book is a lot more than just a translation. There are too many changes to be enumerated, as they appear in virtually every chapter.

Book Description in Chinese (with the Author's Biography): 

在《眾裏尋她：公義在香港》，陳文敏教授通過其個人經驗和重要案例，探討香港法律制度的核心價值。本書解釋和釐清了一些有關香港法律的常見問題。例如大律師如何為有罪的人作辯護？法律偏袒於有財有勢的人嗎？我們是否在任何情況下皆要遵守法律？在人權與國家安全互相抵觸的情況下，兩者該如何取得平衡？公平又如何與行政效能協調？我們可以因自由被濫用而否定它嗎？陳教授在書中亦會談及法律專業和專業精神，並指出法律專業備受尊崇在於律師嚴格堅持其專業操守，並致力於維護公義與公平。

本書所談及的案例涵蓋不同的法律範疇，並橫跨陳教授數十年的執業經歷。通過這些真實案例，陳教授不但令讀者更明白香港的法律制度如何運作，亦讓讀者更深入地考量法律體制、法律專業、正義在現代社會的角色和法治的重要性。

陳文敏為香港大學法律學院公法講座教授暨前院長（2002–2014），專研憲法、行政法和人權法，著作甚豐。他於2003年成為香港首位名譽資深大律師。2018年出版Paths of Justice 一書，為本書的英文版本。2020年以《正道、大學：寫在風雨之後》一書獲第13屆香港書獎 , 2021 年出版《正道、法治：寫在黎明之前》。

 

Recommendations in Chinese:

「本書詳述了許多不同範疇的法律問題，提出了在閱讀相關法庭判決時難以領略的觀點。筆者也將抽象的法律原則以他的人生體驗深刻地人性化。」 ──梁定邦，QC，SC，JP，曾任高等法院暫委大法官

「本書透過說故事的形式探討法律問題，使讀者易於理解。書中的生動活潑法律場景，展現了不少備受尊崇的大律師的故事和香港法律的重要變遷。」 ──吳靄儀，大律師，前香港立法會議員

New Book: Paths of Justice (HKU Press) by Johannes Chan

Paths of Justice
Johannes Chan
HKU Press
June 2018, 264 pp

Description: In Paths of Justice, Johannes Chan illuminates fundamental themes and basic values in Hong Kong’s legal system by using his own experience and drawing on interesting and important cases. The book explains and demystifies some of the most frequently asked questions about the law: How does a lawyer defend someone who is guilty? Does the law favour the rich and the resourceful? Is there a duty to obey the law in all circumstances? How can human rights and national security coexist in balance if their goals conflict in certain situations? How can fairness be reconciled with administrative efficacy? Is an abuse of freedom a justification for denying it? He also casts light on legal profession and professionalism, arguing that the legal profession is honourable only because lawyers, by and large, do live up to a high ethical standard and are committed to the values of justice and fairness.

     These cases cover a wide range of legal discussion and span several decades of Chan’s professional practice, from when he was a young barrister to his years as Honorary Senior Counsel. Through the description of these real-life court cases, he gives readers not only a better understanding of how Hong Kong’s legal system works in practice, but also the essential tools to think deeply about legal institutions, the legal profession, the role of justice in a modern society, and the importance of the rule of law.

      Professor Chan was recently interviewed by the SCMP on 9 July 2018 and by Deutsche Welle on 29 June 2018.

Hong Kong Law Students Win First Round of Global Legal Hackathon

HKU BBA(Law) & LLB Year 3 students, Alison Li Pui Wun, Edelweiss Kwok Yuet Yi and Sally Yiu Man Ki together with two CUHK LLB students and four computer science/information technology experts won the Hong Kong round of Global Legal Hackathon. They will represent Hong Kong in the next round of the competition, with a chance to head to the finals in New York in April.

     The Global Legal Hackathon 2018, which took place on 23-25 February 2018, was co-organised by various legal-tech companies including IBM Watson, Global Legal Blockchain Consortium and Integra, and is one of the largest legal hackathons taking place in over 20 countries and 40 cities. It brought together stakeholders in the legal industry, including legal professionals, technologists, business strategists and law students in an intense sprint of legal tech education, creativity and invention. Each team was required to create a technological solution for improving the legal industry worldwide under a tight schedule. A video for the event can be viewed here.

     The winning project "Decoding Law" is a machine learning powered browser plugin that helps people read and understand legislation. It finds the relevant section(s) of legislation by identifying keywords in questions entered by users, explains defined terms for easier navigation and breaks down complex legislative drafting into simple language, which is particularly useful to unrepresented litigants. If you are interested in knowing more or want to support the team, please like and follow their Facebook page.  They need as many likes as possible to get to the final round.
     Alison, Edelweiss and Sally are newbies to hackathon. Edelweiss said, "the competition is an eye-opening experience that provides lots of different insights for legal tech that I have never imagined before." Alison said, "the GLH is a great platform for us to meet legal and tech talents and exchange and even realise our innovative ideas. It is indeed inspiring to see different teams' approaches and solutions, which is unprecedented but feasible." Sally said, "I am indeed impressed to see so many talented minds collaborate and come up with feasible solutions to solve certain legal problems in the society."  For more information, read Brian Tang (curator of the event)'s coverage in Asia Legal Business.

Photo with the judges and the organiser

(First row left 2: Edelweiss Kwok; first row left 3: Alison Li; first row left 4: Sally Yiu)

Law students team photo

(Left 2: Sally Yiu; Middle: Alison Li; Right 2: Edelweiss Kwok)

Michael Ng on Access to Justice in Rural China: A History of Atypical Legal Development and Legal Service Provision (The China Review)

"Nonprofessional Access to Justice in Rural China: A History of Atypical Legal Development and Legal Service Provision"
Michael Ng and Xuanming Pan
The China Review: an Interdisciplinary Journal on Greater China
October 2017,  Vol. 17, No. 3, pp. 59-86

Abstract:  This article provides a corrective to the conventional discourse on legal development in modern and contemporary China. By mapping the landscape of nonprofessional legal service provision crossing over modern and contemporary history, this research proposes a new analytical framework for understanding lawyering, professionalization, and access to justice in China. Previous studies present an urban-centric view and highlight the alternativeness and transitional nature of nonprofessional legal service providers (who operate primarily in rural China) vis-à-vis the professionally trained and qualified lawyers (who serve primarily in urban China). The urban-oriented discourse downplays, if not ignores, the historical fact that the ordinary people of China, mostly residing in rural areas, have relied on nonprofessional legal workers as their mainstream access to justice for centuries, with demand for their services remaining largely unchanged throughout the Qing, Republican, Mao, and post-Mao eras despite the attempted monopolization of the legal market by qualified lawyers. This article therefore argues for a reorientation of the conventional inquiry concerning the path toward the professionalization of lawyering in China that is framed in terms of license-based expertise and access. Rural legal workers, this article further argues, will, and should be allowed to, continue to meet the legal demand of the broader rural masses in China, demand that can hardly be met by the socially elite qualified lawyers practicing in urbanized China and provide, together with the qualified legal profession, dual-core access to justice in China.

Anne Cheung on Microbloggers' Battle for Legal Justice in China (new book chapter)

"Microbloggers' Battle for Legal Justice in China"
Anne Cheung
in Jacques deLisle, Avery Goldstein & Guobin Yang (eds), The Internet, Social Media, and a Changing China (University of Pennsylvania Press 2016)
pp 129-149

The relationship between courts and the media is not an easy one in many countries, and China is no exception. While trial by media is often frowned upon in the West, its close variation—known as “public opinion supervision”—has been embraced in China. The latter term was coined by the Chinese Communist Party (the Party) in the 1980s to describe the mobilization of citizen awareness and public opinion by the media to check deleterious forces within the state under the guidance and supervision of the Party. The objects of scrutiny by public opinion supervision have included the courts, with the media acting as a state agent between the authorities and the citizenry. 

     By the dawn of the twenty-first century, Web 2.0 had changed this dynamic. Armed with the Internet, public opinion has become a powerful force. Free from Party supervision and seemingly holding the potential to provide genuine monitoring, this “public opinion monitoring” differs from public opinion supervision. It is an independent force arising from the citizenry and seeking to hold the government accountable, to prevent abuses of power, and to bring justice and fairness to society. The Internet has played an indispensable and prominent role in fostering this form of citizen monitoring. As Guobin Yang points out, the Internet in China is an arena of intense struggle, full of complex dynamics and participatory and contentious in nature. This struggle is also being played out in legal disputes, posing new challenges to the judiciary... Click here to read further.