Human Rights in Hong Kong Criminal Trials

Abstract

Hong Kong offers a unique perspective and makes a distinctive contribution to the dialogue on human rights and criminal evidence. For more than 150 years, Hong Kong was a British colony with final appeals heard by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London. Criminal trials in the colony were modeled on those in English courts. On 1 July 1997, Hong Kong became the only common law jurisdiction under Chinese sovereignty. Colonial appeals to London were abolished, and Hong Kong established its own Court of Final Appeal (CFA) with a mechanism that allowed visiting foreign judges to hear cases as Hong Kong judges. This chapter explores the evolution and development of human rights standards in Hong Kong criminal trials post-1997. It will be shown that the Privy Council’s legacy continues to live on in the evolving jurisprudence of the CFA, which has assumed the mantle of protector of defendants’ rights and interests. Far from rolling back any of the previous human rights standards, the CFA has extended them to other areas by employing traditional common law discourse and initiating new constitutional developments, though its general approach in relation to remedies for constitutional breaches has been pragmatic and cautious.