Top judge faces onslaught of new, tough challenges, says law expert

A growing need to resist Beijing's call for Hong Kong judges to follow China's model and the increasingly indigenous nature of legal disputes have presented the city's top judge with unprecedented challenges, a law expert has said in his new book.

Lo Pui-yin, chairman of the Bar Association's constitutional affairs and human rights committee, argues in his book for the need to keep a common-law approach in interpreting the Basic Law, the city's mini-constitution.

"The [Hong Kong] courts under … Chief Justice [Geoffrey Ma Tao-li] will face challenges that are hardly the incidences of managing a rising caseload and maintaining the quality of judgments," Lo wrote in his new book, The Judicial Construction of Hong Kong's Basic Law: Courts, Politics and Society after 1997.

While former top judge Andrew Li Kwok-nang - the first to chair the Court of Final Appeal after the handover in 1997 - focused mainly on keeping Hong Kong's constitutional jurisdiction distinct from the rest of China's, Lo said, the incumbent Ma - who took over in 2010 - would have to insist that Beijing's understanding of judicial functions was incompatible with Hong Kong's.

"The so-called 'new policy' of the central authorities towards Hong Kong in general has manifested in repeated calls for co-operative or supportive approach on the part of the judiciary with the executive and the legislature.

"Judges of the HKSAR have to be outgoing, receptive and at times courageous to underline and apply internationally adopted judicial standards so as not to be assimilated to become part of the China Model."