First Supreme Court president declines a new term in former colony’s final court of appeal ‘for personal reasons’. Lord Phillips’s decision was welcomed by freedom of speech campaigners, but is criticised by pro-democracy campaigners.
The first president of the Supreme Court in the UK has become the latest judge to quit Hong Kong’s top bench as concern grows over the rule of law in the territory.
Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers confirmed on Monday that he had declined an offer to take another term as one of the foreign judges in the former colony’s court of final appeal.
Phillips, 86, who became the first leader of the UK’s top court when it started in 2009, told The Times that he was leaving the Hong Kong bench for “personal not political reasons”.
His departure comes four months after two other former Supreme Court judges, Lord Sumption and Lord Collins of Mapesbury, also gave up their places on the Hong Kong bench.
The territory’s highest court was created as part of the 1997 deal by which the British handed their former colony to China. The court replaced the judicial committee of the privy council, which is still the highest court for some Commonwealth countries.
As recently as 2021, up to nine sitting and retired British judges, including Baroness Hale of Richmond, the first female president of the Supreme Court, sat part-time on the Hong Kong bench.
Hale stood down that year and in 2022 Lord Reed of Allermuir and Lord Hodge, the Supreme Court’s current president and deputy president, resigned their part-time posts.
At the time, Reed and Hodge expressed concern over the draconian national security law that had been imposed on Hong Kong by the authorities in Beijing.
The current trial of Jimmy Lai has added pressure on the remaining British judges in Hong Kong. The 76-year-old British publisher is accused of various crimes under that legislation and faces a life prison sentence if convicted.
Phillips’s departure leaves only two retired British judges on the Hong Kong bench: Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury, 76, who was president of the Supreme Court for five years until 2017, and Lord Hoffman, 90, a former law lord.
Phillips declined to comment further on his reasons for leaving.
His decision was welcomed by pro-democracy and freedom of speech campaigners but Alyssa Fong, of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, said that her group was “appalled it took him so long to take this decision, given the series of high-profile pro-democracy persecutions that he would have seen take place, and that several of his fellow judges had already chosen to step down”.
Fong added that “the more foreign judges resign, the less the Hong Kong government can use these judges to give their human rights abuses this false air of credibility”.
She went on to urge the remaining common law judges on the Hong Kong court from the UK and Australia “to immediately follow suit. It is dumbfounding that some judges continue to choose to ruin their reputations and their integrity for the Hong Kong authorities and Chinese Communist Party”.
Written and first published by Jonathan Ames, Legal Editor Monday September 30 2024, 5.40pm, The Times