Comparative public health emergency constitutions in the Chinese Special Administrative Regions

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought the world to its knees. Of interest to comparative constitutional law is that since the outbreak of COVID-19, almost two third of the world’s population have experienced some form of lockdown that unprecedentedly inhibited their freedom of movement, among other constitutional liberties. Public health emergency constitutions, understood here as framework statutes that legitimize the use of emergency powers to address public health crises, in addition to the constitutional norms that control their arbitrary use, are under strain all over the world. This study will be the first to examine the relatively new public health emergency constitutions of the Chinese Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and Macao, which despite their varying common law and civilian law traditions pedigrees, share overarching similarities in terms of history, culture, GDP per capita, and constitutional design, and have been commensurably successful in containing the spread of COVID-19 and preventing deaths related to the disease, their geographical proximity to Wuhan, the first epicenter of the pandemic notwithstanding. Emphases will be given to the Regions’ highly similar Basic Laws, Hong Kong’s Prevention and Control of Disease Ordinance 2008, and Macao’s Legal Regime for Civil Protection 2020.