Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2021

Abstract

This Article considers the uneasy constitutional relationship between Hong Kong and the People's Republic of China Central Government through the lens of the National People's Congress Standing Committee's interpretations of the Hong Kong Basic Law. These interpretations have constrained and redirected Hong Kong's democratic development, and scholars have appropriately questioned the legitimate extent of the Standing Committee's interpretative authority in light Article 158 and the animating purposes of the Sino-British Joint Declaration Treaty. But the interpretations are less frequently treated as legal texts that both reflect and inform underlying constitutional developments.

This Article therefore evaluates the Standing Committee's normative and methodological commitments over the course of its Basic Law interpretations. While some interpretations are couched in interpretative frames familiar to a common-law audience-making appeals to the text of the Basic Law, to the original intent of the Basic Law's drafting body, or to the precedential weight of previous government decisions or historical practice-others eschew common-law concepts and instead resemble Chinese legislative interpretation of Mainland sources of law. The texts of later interpretations also express an increasingly vertical constitutional arrangement. These interpretative shifts, when considered alongside other historical developments, provide a window into the Standing Committee's changing constitutional posture and the intensifying interactions between common law and Chinese socialist-civil law systems.

Download

Library of Congress Subject Headings

Constitutional law--China--Hing Kong, Hong Kong (China)--Relations--China

Share

COinS