Wally Yeung

Wally Yeung Chun-kuen (Chinese: 楊振權; born 1950) is a Hong Kong judge. He has served as a Vice-President of the Court of Appeal since July 2011. He is the President of the College Council of St. John's College, University of Hong Kong.[1]

In this Chinese name, the family name is Yeung.
The Honourable Mr Justice

Wallly Yeung Chun-kuen

VP
楊振權
Vice President of the Court of Appeal of the High Court
Assumed office
2011
Justice of Appeal of the Court of Appeal of the High Court
In office
2002–2011
Judge of the Court of First Instance of the High Court
In office
1995–2002
District Judge
In office
1987–1995
Magistrate
In office
1986–1987
Personal details
Born1950 (age 70–71)
Hong Kong
NationalityChinese
Alma materUniversity of Hong Kong

Yeung received an LLB in 1974 and a PCLL in 1975 from the University of Hong Kong.[2]

Yeung was called to the Hong Kong Bar in 1976 and was a barrister in private practice until 1985.[2]

In 1985, Yeung joined the bench as a Permanent Magistrate. In 1987, Yeung was promoted to the District Court.[2]

In 1995, Yeung was appointed as a Judge of the High Court of Justice (known as the Court of First Instance of the High Court after the transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong in 1997).[2]

Yeung was elevated to the Court of Appeal on 6 May 2002, along with fellow Court of First Instance judge Maria Yuen.[2][3]

In 2007, Yeung took over as Chairman of the Commission of Inquiry investigating alleged government interference into academic freedom at the Hong Kong Institute of Education after Mr Justice Woo Kwok-hing recused himself to avoid the appearance of partiality. Yeung was appointed because, unlike Woo, he was not acquainted with either Arthur Li or Fanny Law.[4]

Yeung was appointed as Vice President of the Court of Appeal on 25 July 2011.[5][6]

Major cases

Yeung was one of the pioneers of judicial bilingualism in Hong Kong: in the December 1995 case Sun Er-jo v. Lo Ching & Ors, Case No. 3283/1995, he was the first High Court judge to conduct a civil hearing using Cantonese as the language of the courtroom, and the first to use written Chinese to deliver a judgment.[7]

A more controversial ruling of Yeung's was R. v Tam Yuk-ha, HCMA 933/1996. Tam had placed a table on the pavement outside her store, and was prosecuted for making an unauthorised "addition" to her premises after having been granted a licence, contrary to Food Business (Urban Council) By-Laws (Cap. 132Y) § 35(a). Yeung overturned the magistrate's ruling of guilt because the Chinese version of the by-law, unlike the English version, did not prohibit "additions" in general but only "building additional construction or building works" (his back-translation of the term "增建工程" used in the Chinese version), and in the event of inability to reconcile the two equally authentic versions of the by-law, he was obligated to choose the interpretation which favoured the defendant.[8] In HKSAR v Tam Yuk-ha, HCMA 1385/1996, the Court of Appeal overturned Yeung's ruling and reinstated Tam's conviction on the grounds that the term in question did not merely refer to "construction" but any "erection" of additional works.[9]

Yeung would go on to become the chairman of the Subcommittee on the Translation of Case Precedents, which oversaw a three-month pilot project from January to April 1999 to produce Chinese translations of twenty-five judgments of precedential value identified by the Judiciary, the Bar Association, the Law Society, and the Department of Justice.[7]

Occupy sentence
Main article: 2017 imprisonment of Hong Kong democracy activists

On 17 August 2017, Yeung and two other judges of the Court of Appeal Derek Pang and Jeremy Poon sentenced the three main leaders in the 2014 Hong Kong protests, Joshua Wong, Alex Chow and Nathan Law to six to eight months in prison in the case of Secretary for Justice v. Wong Chi Fung and others, CAAR 4/2016; the trio had stormed a fenced-off government forecourt known as "Civic Square" which triggered the 79-day Occupy protests. The ruling sparked widespread fear over Hong Kong's judicial independence, as the Court of Appeal overturned the more lenient sentence of the Court of First Instance after the government pushed for harsher punishments.[10]

Yeung was criticised for his strong words in the judgement, in which he observed that "in recent years, an unhealthy wind has been blowing in Hong Kong." He said: "Some people, on the pretext of pursuing their ideals or freely exercising their rights conferred by law, have acted wantonly in an unlawful manner. Not only do they refuse to admit their law-breaking activities are wrong, but they even go as far as regarding such activities as a source of honour and pride."[10] While supportive of the judge's ruling, former Hong Kong Bar Association chairman Paul Shieh said his comments were "a bit emotionally charged and not often seen" in a common law ruling.[11] It was later reported that Yeung had previously attended a cocktail party held by the anti-Occupy Small and Medium Enterprises Law Firm Association of Hong Kong; his impartiality was thus questioned by legislator Dennis Kwok.[12]

Others

In 1999, Yeung heard a major judicial review case relating to the right of abode in Hong Kong, Lau Kong-yung & Ors v. Director of Immigration, HCAL 20/1999. He found that the seventeen mainland-born applicants were not entitled to the right of abode by virtue of their parents' Hong Kong permanent resident status until they had obtained Certificates of Entitlement, and thus refused to overturn the removal order issued against them by the Director of Immigration.[13]

Personal life

Yeung was born in Hong Kong. He is married to Rechelle, with whom he has a son Yeung Jun-wei (楊浚瑋, born 1987).

References
  1. "College Management". St. John's College, University of Hong Kong.
  2. "Judicial Appointment". Government of Hong Kong. 3 May 2002.
  3. "杨振权袁家宁获委任为香港高等法院上诉法庭法官 (Yeung Chun-kuen, Yuen Ka-ning appointed Justices of the Court of Appeal of the High Court of Hong Kong)". Xinhua News. 3 May 2002. Retrieved 7 June 2013.
  4. "楊振權接棒查教院風波 (Yeung Chun-kuen picks up baton in investigation of Institute of Education scandal)". Apple Daily. 21 March 2007. Retrieved 7 June 2013.
  5. "Judicial appointment". Government of Hong Kong. 21 July 2011.
  6. "楊振權獲委任香港高等法院上訴法庭副庭長 (Yeung Chun-kuen appointed Hong Kong High Court Court of Appeal vice-president)". People's Daily. 22 July 2011. Retrieved 7 June 2013.
  7. Poon, Emily Wai-Yee (2006). "The Translation of Judgments". Meta: Translators' Journal. 51 (3): 551–569. doi:10.7202/013559ar. Retrieved 9 June 2013.
  8. Ng, Eva N. S. (2009). "The tension between adequacy and acceptability in legal interpreting and translation". In Hale, Sandra Beatriz; Ozolins, Uldis; Stern, Ludmilla (eds.). Quality in Interpreting: a Shared Responsibility. John Benjamins Publishing. ISBN 9789027224316.
  9. Yeung, Matthew. "Assessing Parallel Texts in Legal Translation". The Journal of Specialised Translation. 1 (1). Retrieved 7 June 2013.
  10. "Court finally releases English version of judgment that jailed Hong Kong activists Joshua Wong, Nathan Law and Alex Chow". South China Morning Post. 30 August 2017.
  11. "Student leaders 'paid for what they asked for'". The Standard. 21 August 2017.
  12. "中小型律師行協會指邀請楊振權出席酒會屬正常社交". 881903.com. 18 August 2017.
  13. Landler, Mark (31 March 1999). "Hong Kong Court Tells 17 They Must Return to China". The New York Times. Retrieved 7 June 2013.
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