Hong Kong judges should seek to apply Chinese legal traditions while reviewing security cases, an adviser to the country’s legislature said, in the latest sign of changes coming to the former British colony’s courts. Reports Bloomberg
Local judges need to take Chinese law into account when trying cases stemming from the national security legislation imposed two weeks ago by Beijing, said Han Dayuan, a member of the 12-member parliamentary committee that oversees Hong Kong law. “Operating under ‘one country, two systems,’ if you don’t have a grasp of laws in the ‘one country,’ you will not be able to understand how a national law is implemented in the special administrative region,” Han said in an interview Tuesday with Bloomberg News.
The National Security Law is fundamentally changing the administration of justice in Hong Kong, which was promised autonomy under a “one country, two systems” framework before returning to Chinese rule in 1997. Besides preserving Hong Kong’s civil rights, common law and capitalist financial system, the handover agreement guaranteed that local courts would be able to “exercise judicial power independently, free from any interference.”
The courts work very differently on the mainland, which is based on continental European systems that favor civil codes over judicial interpretation. Moreover, all police, prosecutors and courts are answerable to the ruling Communist Party and ultimately President Xi Jinping. China’s top judge once dismissed the concepts of separation of powers and judicial independence as “erroneous Western notions.”
The national security legislation handed down by the National People’s Congress on June 30 not only borrowed sweeping language from Chinese laws, it gave the parliament power to interpret its meaning. The law for the first time gave Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam, a Beijing appointee, the power to designate a pool of judges to hear cases, as opposed to the courts.
