High Court judge in oath-taking case no stranger to thorny political issues

In a society where the public has more confidence in the courts than in the administration, the judge presiding over the oath-taking case – now under appeal – has, in the few years since he was chosen to focus on judicial reviews, already been brought in to rule on a range of thorny political issues from Occupy Central to political reform.

Thomas Au Hing-cheung is the judge on the Court of First Instance who specialises in constitutional and administrative law proceedings. A high-flyer in the judiciary, he was appointed as district judge in 2007 and took only two years to be promoted to the High Court. He gave up his Civic Party membership in 2006 before accepting the appointment to be a full-time judge.

A lawyer who declined to be named described Mr Justice Au as a judge “with a great sense of humour when not commenting on the law”, but who adopted a “technical” approach to his cases, as opposed to the more creative style of one of his predecessors, Michael Hartmann.

In the oath-taking case, some lawyers and scholars had hoped Mr Justice Au would make a speedy delivery of his first judgment to avoid being pre-empted by Beijing’s interpretation of the Basic Law.

But he handed down his ruling only a week after the interpretation, which came with such specific rules on oaths that some lawyers argued it could, when applied, effectively disqualify localists Sixtus Baggio Leung Chun-hang and Yau Wai-ching.