Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-42gr6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T18:28:01.206Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

7 - Behind the Text of the Basic Law

Some Constitutional Fundamentals

from Part II - The View from Asia Pacific and the Middle East

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 November 2018

Rosalind Dixon
Affiliation:
University of New South Wales, Sydney
Adrienne Stone
Affiliation:
University of Melbourne
Get access

Summary

Interpretation of a constitution is rarely a neutral process. It always involves judicial choices among a number of plausible solutions. In making these choices and giving meaning to the general text of a constitution, the courts are from time to time guided by various fundamental values in the constitutional system. Some of these fundamental values may not be readily visible from the text of the constitution itself, and are shaped by the social, political and historical contexts of the society in which the constitution operates. This chapter tries to explore some of these invisible fundamental values in the context of Hong Kong - a common law system engulfed by a much more economically and politically powerful sovereign country with a socialist legal system and ideology under the constitutional model of One Country, Two Systems, and examines how judicial choices are shaped by the need to preserve the integrity of the common law system and the previous social and economic systems on the one hand, and the need to reconcile with the sovereign power and its legitimate exercise on the other hand, against the background of an uncertain future of how far the constitutional model of One Country, Two Systems is to last beyond the promise of 50 years till 2047.
Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2018

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×