A Shrinking Space

Speaker

Professor Johannes Chan (University of Hong Kong)

Chair:

Lord Carnwath

About the lecture:

Until recently, courts in authoritarian regimes are largely ignored as it is generally believed that the rule of law and independence of the judiciary could only flourish in a liberal democracy. In the last two decades, there has been a surge of academic researches on the complex roles that the courts could play and have played in authoritarian and semi-authoritarian regimes. Most of these studies were conducted with reference to a unified state. Many of them utilize social sciences or economic models such as game theory or transactional costs analysis, and rely on observations on the outcomes of controversial judicial decisions. In this context, the unique constitutional arrangement in Hong Kong, in which a liberal common law court in a highly sophisticated metropolis and one of the most important financial centres in the world, is encapsulated within a Socialist-Leninist sovereign regime that rejects separation of powers and values of individual liberalism on the one hand but has emerged as the second largest economy in the world on the other, provides a unique and interesting case study on the roles and functions of the judiciary within an authoritarian or semi-authoritarian regime. Using Hong Kong as an example, this lecture examines a series of controversial judicial decisions of the Hong Kong courts involving the interests of the Central Government. It is argued that no hypothesis about the courts could be completed without analysing in detail how they actually function, what constraints they face, and what choices and options are open to them in judicial adjudication.  

About the speaker:

Johannes Chan is Professor of Law and former Dean of the Faculty of Law (2002-2014), being the longest serving Dean of the Faculty.  He was also a visiting professor to a number of universities in Europe and Asia, including being the BOK Visiting International Professor of Penn Law School, University of Pennsylvania (2014), Herbert Smith Freehills Visiting Professor of Cambridge University (2015), and a visiting fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge University. In recognition of his distinguished contribution to legal development through both advocacy in courts and legal research and publications, he was honoured by the Chief Justice in 2003 by his appointment as the first (and so far the only) Honorary Senior Counsel in Hong Kong. He specializes in human rights, constitutional and administrative law, and has published widely in these fields. 

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