Geoffrey Ma
Hong Kong’s Chief Justice Geoffrey Ma said Saturday judges should act only on the basis of the law and not be swayed by any other factor, the South China Morning Post reported yesterday, citing Ma’s speech at a conference.
The top judge’s remarks came a day after his predecessor, Andrew Li, said the city needed to defend the independence of the judiciary. In a policy paper issued in June, China asked Hong Kong judges to be patriotic, stoking concerns over the city’s independence from Beijing.
Addressing a conference organized by the University of Cambridge Hong Kong and China Affairs Society, Ma said the white paper had triggered discussion on the rule of law, according to the Post. Judicial independence was protected by various articles of the Basic Law, such as the stipulation that judicial and professional qualities should be the only criteria in a judge’s appointment, Ma was reported as saying.
Ma said the public could assess whether the city’s courts remained independent based on four factors: the views of the legal profession on the topic, court transparency, rulings in controversial cases and those involving the government, and whether judgments complied, objectively, with legal principles, the newspaper reported.
“The rule of law with an independent judiciary is universally recognized as a cornerstone of our society,” Li wrote in an Aug. 15 commentary in the Post. “It is a core value which lies at the heart of our separate systems.”
The policy paper has stoked debate in Hong Kong over the city’s autonomy, granted under the One Country, Two Systems arrangement put in place by former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, and has raised concerns over the city’s political stability as a global financial center.
The One Country, Two Systems policy granted Hong Kong its own legal system for 50 years under the Basic Law implemented after the U.K. returned the territory to China in 1997. Bloomberg
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