I think its very important to remember that the rule of law is mostly about how government behave. Its the rule of law, and so the idea long developed, especially in British common law of tradition, has been that the government is subject to the law, no one is above the law, applied in ordinary manner. Ideas of justice and human rights are included because its thought that those things are important for people to guard and protect the rule of law. And so in this episode here in Hong Kong, weve had a white paper by the central government that really trashes the rule of law. It pretty much declares the central government above the law, that all authority is said to come from the central government - they use the word sole authority - and essentially said that they can do what they want: they can interpret the Basic Law as they want, that they have decided theyre committed to certain promises in the Basic Law but that those are not firm, and so this seemed to renege on the deal. And then they came along with the NPC Standing Committee decision in which the local government was very complicit by filing a report that seemed to misrepresent Hong Kong views, and there they give meaning to words that no one would recognise - no one in the world would think a vetted election is universal suffrage. And so with this liberty they have taken with their own powers and with interpreting the Basic Law, then I think Hong Kong people were perplexed: where are the promises that were made to us? And so I think thats whats driving the movement. People break the law all the time, so breaking the law doesnt necessarily undermine the rule of law. You can imagine a situation of lawlessness where everyone is breaking the law and hurdling stones and so on, and breaking down store fronts and so on, where you can say breaking the law itself was undermining the rule of law. But for the most part we look to what government does in response to lawbreakers. If the courts issue orders and the law is enforced, then we say the rule of law is upheld. And so I think this is the sort of unevenness of whos responsible currently for undermining the rule of law. －Michael Davis (Faculty of Law professor, University of Hong Kong)
Posted on: Fri, 21 Nov 2014 23:20:16 +0000
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