Kong Yunming manifest unreasonableness: The Doctrinal future of constitutional review of welfare policy in Hong Kong

Abstract

It would be easy to overstate the expansive impact of the Court of Final Appeal's controversial decision in Kong Yunming v Director of Social Welfare on the right to social welfare, its effects in removing a significant obstacle for new immigrants seeking social security payments notwithstanding. The new test that the Court deployed for reviewing the constitutionality of welfare policy is narrow and devoid of any commitment whatsoever to abstract societal ideals; it resembled the proportionality doctrine at most in form but definitely not in spirit. This article demonstrates how, properly understood, the three stages of this test boils down to no more than one stage: whether the impugned policy is manifestly unreasonable. This minimalist standard, in many ways similar to Wednesbury irrationality, evidences the Court's entrenchment of judicial deference in welfare policy adjudication and conservative economic philosophy in the constitutional common law of Hong Kong.