Legal Research for Hong Kong’s Special Admin Region

Hong Kong has a unique legal situation, being a former British colony inheriting the common law. As a result the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) has a different legal system than the civil code found in the mainland.

To complicated it further , Hong Kong borrows from other common law jurisdictions when necessary. Chapter 4, S. 4 of the Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region states,

Article 84
The courts of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region shall adjudicate cases in accordance with the laws applicable in the Region as prescribed in Article 18 of this Law and may refer to precedents of other common law jurisdictions.

To traverse this legal maze, Sergio Stone of Stanford Law School and Roy Sturgeon of Touro Law Center have released a guide, “One Country, Two Systems” of Legal Research: A Brief Guide to Finding the Law of China’s Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

Despite its complexities, a survey released this passed week by the Political and Economic Risk Consultancy (PERC) identified Hong Kong as the best judiciary system in Asia.

Mainland China placed tenth.

Updates

The Cato Institute‘s new release, Economic Freedom Of The World: 2008 Annual Report, gives Hong Kong as the highest rating in the world, largely based on legal factors such as judicial independence.

The rankings reflect policies and institutions supportive of personal choice, voluntary exchange, free competition, and security of private property.

It’s not values we typically associate with a jurisdiction technically owned by the largest Communist country. But it does speak to the political, economic and legal diversity of the most populous country in the world, and the potential opportunities for Canadian businesses in the Hong Kong market.

You can see a neat interactive map of the rankings here.