From "Occupying Central” to “Anti-extradition” – Limits of Law and Power of Politics.

The “Anti-extradition Movement” in Hong Kong has been going on for more than 6 months. Since its root cause is the Extradition Bill, this lecture tries to answer the questions why the Bill has failed, for what reasons, and seeks to find out the lessons Hong Kong should learn from it.

After reviewing the background and main contents of the Bill, as well as the Movement, this lecture analyzes major legal issues relating to the Extradition Bill, which demonstrates that the contents of the Bill are reasonable and would remove two major obstacles for future conclusion of a bilateral agreement between Hong Kong and mainland China. I will argue that though the contents and the necessity of the Bill is unquestionable, its consultation was too hasty, the timing was not appropriate, and the promotion was unsatisfactory. As a result, an opportunity to move closer towards the conclusion of a bilateral extradition agreement has been wasted. A well-intentioned and drafted Bill is meaningless if the Government cannot convince its people about it. Law and legal arguments have their limits. Since legislative process is both legal and political, law reaches its limits when politics manages to mobilize sufficient people against the Bill.

Brief bio

Professor of Law, School of Law, City University of Hong Kong. He is originally from mainland China. He is the holder of an LLB (Fudan University, China), LLM from the Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand), and Ph.D (Peking University, China). He specializes in Hong Kong Basic Law, Chinese and comparative constitutional and administrative law. He has more than 100 publications in the relevant fields.
His email is: lwlin@cityu.edu.hk.

All are welcome.