Having an opinion in Hong Kong is a very very dangerous thing which is why I still applaud HKFP for being a voice in the wilderness.
They may have become far more careful with their reporting over the last 6-8 months but they are still the only outlet worth a damn
and this is a very funny and on the ball sentence about the miserable state of the HK “Law” school
This comes in a China Daily piece by one Richard Cullen, an adjunct professor (part-time – don’t call us, we’ll call you) from the University of Hong Kong’s Faculty of Law.
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Well, I don’t suppose that it has anything to do with me, but we now have a response to the idea that planning to veto the government’s budget was not a crime, but a legitimate constitutional recourse outlined in the Basic Law.
This comes in a China Daily piece by one Richard Cullen, an adjunct professor (part-time – don’t call us, we’ll call you) from the University of Hong Kong’s Faculty of Law.
Cullen concedes that the idea that Articles 50 to 52 of the Basic Law authorise a refusal to pass the budget as a way to secure the resignation of the chief executive is “accurate, as far as it goes.” But, he goes on to say, this ignores the “wider contextual considerations.” It is “methodically literal,” and seeks to establish a “legalistic, rarefied zone” for interpretation of the law.
In my experience “legalistic” is a word used for legal arguments which lead to destinations the user does not like. A “rarefied zone”? The law is often described as an artificial system of reasoning intended for the particular purpose of resolving disputes between citizens and between citizens and the state, in which the pursuit of fairness and justice has to compete with the need for predictability and consistency.
Read the full piece
A constitutional innovation: Never mind Hong Kong’s Basic Law, consider the context