Whose rule of law? Rethinking (post-)colonial legal culture in Hong Kong

Abstract

In postcolonial Hong Kong, the Rule of Law inherited from the colonizers has acquired the status of a grand narrative capable of masking its own injustices. This is made possible by the Occidentalization strategies employed by those in power, namely the government and the legal profession. The major injustice of the Rule of Law is in its construction of the standard of reasonableness. It is argued that for linguistic, ethnic and structural reasons, reasonableness as construed in the legal discourse is culture-biased and marginalizes qing, which is a very important element of the cultural roots of the Hong Kong Chinese. The influence of this marginalization of qing is not limited to the legal discourse itself, but is further extended to the public sphere. In turn, in relation to the Rule of Law, the public sphere is rendered unable to perform the task of a 'warning system with sensors' as desired by Habermas.