CNews Issue 3, 2009

Most people may think that the law is about a set of rules. In fact, it is no less about people than any other profession. And it is also about the quality of the people in the profession. It is the quality of the people working in the system which matters most at the end of the day. The rule of law and the independence of the legal system rely significantly on the quality of the lawyers and judges in making sure that the system is truly independent, and that the rule of law is at the heart of the actions they take and the decisions they make everyday. More than half of the current legal practitioners in Hong Kong are graduates of our Faculty of Law. Graduates of our Faculty have flourished and made immense contributions to the three major arms of the legal community in Hong Kong – the solicitors’ profession and the barristers’ profession in practice, lawyers in the Government, and the Judiciary. The last two past Presidents of the Law Society of Hong Kong and the past three Chairpersons of the Hong Kong Bar Association are all our graduates. A total of 32 of the 92 Senior Counsel in Hong Kong are our alumni. In the Judiciary, 16 judges in the Court of Final Appeal and the High Court and above also graduated from this University. The accomplishments of these graduates are probably the best testimony of the quality of the graduates we have produced. Today, our students and graduates have continued with this fine tradition. Many of our graduates have secured employment with major law firms and chambers in Hong Kong. A good number of them have proceeded to master’s level studies at prestigious universities including Harvard, Cambridge and Oxford. Our students have been extremely active in international moot competitions and have secured awards and high rankings every year. At the end of the day, the legal profession, and legal education, is about standards and quality that can stand the test of time. Passing the Torch: Nurturing Generations of Lawyers in Hong Kong and the Mainland The 40 th anniversary celebration of the Faculty of Law at HKU is also the celebration of the 40 th year of introducing the best legal education in Hong Kong. The Faculty was established with categorically clear goals to offer legal education comparable to the best in the world, to develop the laws of Hong Kong, to strengthen the Hong Kong legal system, and to uphold the rule of law as one of the cornerstones for the success of our economy. Since the resumption of sovereignty of Hong Kong by China, the law school has also played a significant role in the modernisation of the legal system and culture in China through the teaching of common law. It was best encapsulated by Professor Johannes Chan, Dean of the Faculty of Law, at one of his recent interviews with the South China Morning Post : “There is always a sense of mission…We have the duty to contribute to the upholding of the rule of law in Hong Kong and contribute to the development of the rule of law in China. We are more than just a teaching institution. We have a peculiar role to play and we would be failing our duty not to meet those challenges.” The rule of law is essentially a concept germinated and firmly entrenched in the Western political and social value systems. When it comes to the transplantation of the concept and practice of rule of law onto Asian soil, there are indeed not many success stories to tell. Hong Kong is one of the very few successful stories, and the rule of law has proved to be one of the pillars of the territory’s success and one of the most prized values of the Hong Kong community. Without overstating the case, the Faculty of Law has produced graduates who have flourished as prominent members of the legal profession and the judiciary, in serving the community and disseminating legal knowledge to the public, and in its participation in and contribution to important political and social developments in Hong Kong. In the last ten years, the Faculty has also been training promising young Mainland scholars and judges in common law. Cover Story 8