Eminent legal trio to serve as law school honorary professors
Former chief justices from England and Hong Kong and an eminent Cambridge academic have been appointed honorary professors of Chinese University's new law school as it prepares to recruit its first undergraduate students.
Announcing the appointments, the law school described as 'three of the best legal minds in the common law world' Lord Woolf of Barnes, former chief justice of England and Wales, Sir Ti-liang Yang, who headed the judiciary in Hong Kong from 1988 to 1996, and Sir David Williams, former vice-chancellor of the University of Cambridge.
Lord Woolf led the reform of the civil justice system in England and Wales and is a non-permanent judge of the Court of Final Appeal. Sir Ti-liang was the chief justice who introduced proceedings in Chinese to Hong Kong courts in 1995. Sir David is widely known for his expertise in constitutional and administrative law.
The director of the university's law school, Mike McConville, said yesterday the trio would help the fledgling department become a 'school of international distinction, relevant to the local community and contributing to regional and national development'.
'The Woolf reforms in England are very much a part of the modernising approach he has taken to make the law accessible to ordinary people,' he said.
'What he has done is to bring law into the community, as a community resource, which is exactly what our law school wants to achieve. Sir T L Yang has done the same thing in Hong Kong by making the law accessible to people whose native language is not English, broadening the reach of the law, making it less intimidating.'
Professor McConville said Sir David's public law speciality would add to this, as judicial reviews were one major way to hold public institutions accountable to the public.
The honorary professors will not be paid, but Professor McConville insisted they would be 'a genuine part of the strategic development of the school'. They would serve as mentors for students and interact with them through other means such as lectures.
The law school is in the process of recruiting its first undergraduate students for the term beginning in September.
