Albert Chen Hung-yee is no stranger to controversy. When the University of Hong Kong (HKU) law professor was a young legal scholar in the 1980s, his articles were circulated among those who were at the time drafting Hong Kong's Basic Law. In 1999, he advised Beijing when the Hong Kong government took the controversial decision to seek reinterpretation of a case involving mainlanders who claimed the right to live in Hong Kong.
Now the quiet and unassuming Professor Chen finds himself in the middle of the city's debate over national security laws. Remarkably for a man who has been drawn into every major constitutional issue in Hong Kong since the Sino-British Joint Declaration was signed in 1984, he has the distinction of being viewed as politically neutral.
Even as the government's plans to enact anti-subversion laws have polarised and politicised the community, Professor Chen has remained deeply involved in public discussion of the proposals but tried to remain objective. In this spirit of objectivity, he did not turn out for the 500,000-strong march on July 1, which included many of his peers. The only rally Professor Chen has ever attended was one held in Hong Kong in response to the Chinese military's crackdown on student demonstrators in Tiananmen Square in June 1989.
'I'm not the kind of person who likes to attend demonstrations - it's just a matter of personality,' he says. 'I'm just a scholar who wants to understand what is happening and I have the opportunity to express my views without having to take to the streets.'
It is this calm temperament that has won him wide respect among many on all sides of the political spectrum, despite the confusing, often contradictory labels he is given.
Born in 1957 to a civil servant father and a teacher mother, Professor Chen was imbued from childhood with a spirit of serving the public. After graduating from St Paul's Co-educational College with A-levels in pure mathematics, applied mathematics, physics, Chinese and English, Professor Chen, deciding that his interests were in social and human studies, embarked on a law degree.