How many foreign judges is too many? Mainland legal expert suggests Hong Kong consider local talent for top court

Basic Law Committee member Rao Geping declines to comment directly on judge who jailed policemen for assaulting Occupy activist.

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Basic Law Committee member Rao Geping during Sunday’s interview. Photo: Tony Cheung

Published: 7:00am, 6 Mar 2017Updated: 11:10am, 6 Mar 2017

A leading mainland legal expert has questioned whether it is reasonable for Hong Kong’s top court to be made up largely of judges with foreign nationalities and suggested the city consider adjusting the ratio.

But Basic Law Committee member Rao Geping, also a law professor at Peking University, acknowledged that foreign judges were allowed under Hong Kong’s Basic Law.

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Rao’s comments came during a 70-minute, wide-ranging interview with Hong Kong media on topics including the city’s independence, national security legislation, Beijing’s power to appoint the city’s chief executive, and legal issues relating to a proposed co-location of immigration checkpoints at the Hong Kong terminus of a high-speed railway to Guangzhou.

Pan-democrat lawmakers had questioned whether it was against the Basic Law to co-locate checkpoints at West Kowloon since the mini-constitution says mainland law shall not be applied in Hong Kong.

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Dismissing such criticisms, Rao said he understood that mainland and Hong Kong officials had “reached a very big consensus on the issue”.