Kemal Bokhary
Having stepped down as a permanent judge of the Court of Final Appeal last year, the semi-retired Kemal Bokhary recently released his new book, “Recollections.” He talks to Andrea Lo about how he came to be a High Court judge and his thoughts on Hong Kong’s political landscape.
When you are young, you think of all sorts of things to do when you grow up, and you’re not sure. There did come a time when I was in my early teens when I was attracted to law. But that was a time when the bench in Hong Kong was staffed by, in effect, colonial legal servants. So local people didn’t go on the bench—except perhaps on the level of the magistrates.
So even after I began to think of going into law, it never occurred to me that I’d be on the bench—because it wasn’t the system in those days.
I became a judge one year after I first sat as a deputy judge. The [former] Chief Justice Sir Yang Ti-liang asked me to go and see him. He said to me, “I am offering you the High Court bench.” I said “I accept.” Altogether there were 10 words—that’s how it happened.
I have to say that when I was at the Bar, I worked very hard. Insofar as it affected me personally I didn’t mind so much, but I think I didn’t have enough time to spend with my children. So apart from wanting to eventually go on the bench and wanting to respond positively to Sir Ti-liang 100 percent, it also occurred to me that there was some advantage of going on the bench, such as maybe having a little bit more time to go on holidays with my children.
I didn’t want to sit down and write a story of my life from start to finish. I wanted to tell these [stories] in terms of recollections, and not always in chronological order, but in the order which they came to my mind. When we chat with our friends and tell stories, we do it that way.
I felt that there was a story to be told about the Hong Kong that I grew up in, in which I practiced law and ultimately sat on the bench. There were also many interesting personalities that I’ve come across—most of them in law but some of them friends and family. And I thought that if I could talk about these things and these people, it may provide a written record of some things which, if left to oral tradition, would be forgotten.