January 5, 2021 05:37:22 pm
The outgoing chief justice of Hong Kong’s highest court addressed criticisms of the city’s judicial system and stressed the importance of the rule of law in a final press conference on Tuesday.
Chief Justice Geoffrey Ma, who will retire Sunday, discussed both the role of the judiciary and his own hopes for the future of Hong Kong. Citing several articles of Hong Kong’s Basic Law, Ma argued that in order to accomplish its role of “uphold[ing] the rule of law,” the judiciary must be independent from interference:
[The independence of the judiciary is] not a political statement. … What it means in essence is that in the handling of cases, judges are going to look only at the law … to decide cases according to the legal merits … fairly and justly, and not to be influenced by any beliefs, particularly political beliefs, but to be influenced only by the law. … All judges take the judicial oath, and this guides a judge as to what he or she should be doing, and that requires upholding the Basic Law, bearing allegiance to Hong Kong, Hong Kong’s SAR, and to decide cases fearlessly, without fear or favor.