Hong Kong — A British judge on Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal will step down after his term ends on Monday, the city’s judiciary said, the fifth foreign justice to leave the bench this year.
Judges from common law jurisdictions are invited to sit as non-permanent members in the former British colony’s top court.
Their presence has long been considered by authorities as a sign of international confidence in Hong Kong’s justice system, which is separate from mainland China’s opaque, party-controlled legal system.
However, the judiciary has seen an unprecedented exodus this year, with Nicholas Addison Phillips being the latest to leave the bench.
The 86-year-old has “indicated recently that he did not wish to have his term of appointment extended upon its expiry on 30 September 2024 due to personal reasons,” the judiciary said in a statement on Monday.
Authorities in Hong Kong have enacted two national security laws to quell dissent since huge, and at times violent, pro-democracy protests were quashed in 2019.
The latest came into force in March, drawing criticism from Western nations, including Britain and the United States, about the legislation further curbing freedoms in Hong Kong.
Two senior British judges resigned from Hong Kong’s top court in June.
One of them, Jonathan Sumption, 75, wrote an opinion piece in The Financial Times that he had resigned because “rule of law is profoundly compromised.”
The other, Lawrence Collins, 83, cited Hong Kong’s “political situation” as the reason for his resignation.
The other two who declined to extend their terms, an Australian judge in March and a Canadian judge in July, cited old age and personal reasons for their resignations.
Phillips, a former chief justice of the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court, has served for 12 years since he joined the court in 2012.
The judiciary thanked him for his “support for the rule of law in Hong Kong during his tenure.”
It said on Monday that “despite the departure of some (non-permanent judges) in recent years, an overwhelming majority of the serving and departed (judges) have publicly reiterated their continued confidence in judicial independence in Hong Kong.”
Six foreign judges will remain on the Court of Final Appeal following Phillips’s departure.
Hong Kong had five overseas judges sitting in its top court when the city was handed back to China in 1997.
The bench gradually expanded to 15 members in 2019 and 2020 before downsizing for four consecutive years.
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