Man with indecent assault conviction ‘fit and proper person’ for admission to Bar, Hong Kong court rules
In landmark case, Court of Appeal backs would-be barrister who had his application rejected last year after indecently assaulting a 14-year-old girl in 2010
An aspiring barrister who was deemed not fit and proper for admission to the Bar because of an indecent assault conviction in 2010 was finally admitted by the High Court on Thursday after two years of controversial debate.
The man, identified only as “A” in court, had applied to the Bar Association’s Bar Council for a practising certificate but the secretary for justice made an objection to the Court of First Instance, which has the final say on admissions. In a first, the justice chief’s objection was not backed by the association.
Siding with the justice chief, Mr Justice Anthony Chan Kin-keung concluded last year that the applicant was “not a fit and proper person” because he committed a serious offence and his record did “not tally with the expectations of the community of Hong Kong on the standard of the Bar”.
But on Thursday Court of Appeal vice-president Mr Justice Johnson Lam Man-hon found the judge had erred with no basis to support his understanding of the community’s expectations, and criticised his approach as “too dogmatic and inflexible”.
“The judge unwittingly focused solely on the conviction and the sentence and in so doing failed to apply a forward-looking perspective,” he said in a 19-page judgment.