It has recently been suggested in some quarters here that a 're-interpretation' of the Basic Law by the mainland National People's Congress may serve to relieve the Government of the Hong Kong SAR from the inconvenience of implementing the 'right of abode' decisions of the Court of Final Appeal, without doing any damage to the most important difference, within our 'one country', between the 'two systems' it embraces, that is, the mainland's 'system' and the SAR's 'system'.
I refer to the rule of law, a concept perhaps less well understood on the mainland than in the SAR.
In this connection, it is worth recalling the words of Wilson J in In re Bachand v. Dupuis [1946] 2 DLR 641, at pp. 645, 655: 'The whole value of the legal system - the integrity of the rule of law - is at once destroyed if it becomes possible for officials by arbitrary decisions made, not in the public court rooms but in the private office of officialdom, without hearing the parties, without taking evidence, free of all obedience to settled legal principles, and subject to no appeal, effectively to overrule the Courts . . . ' It might make for more informed debate if those involved in it could be brought to understand that what is at stake here is a legal issue, not a political one.
The Hon. Mr JUSTICE GODFREY Justice of Appeal
