Constitutional Change in Asia in the 21st Century
Faculty of Law, The University of Hong Kong
Speakers
Professor Larry Backer
Professor Larry Catá Backer is Professor of Law and International Affairs at Penn State Law. Professor Backer focuses his research on governance-related issues of globalization and the constitutional theories of public and private governance, with an emphasis on institutional frameworks for public-private law governance systems. Recent work centers on issues of corporate social responsibility, mixed regulatory systems and regulatory governance (especially touching on SOEs and SWFs), the emerging problems of polycentricity where multiple systems might be simultaneously applied to a single issue or event, and problems of translation between Western and Marxist Leninist (especially Chinese and Cuban) constitutional systems. He has an interest in the transformations of university governance and its relation to wider changes in societal ordering in the 21st century with respect to which he has also published.
Professor Ngoc Son Bui
Ngoc Son Bui is Professor of Asian Laws at the Faculty of Law, University of Oxford, and a Fellow of St Hugh's College, Oxford. He is a graduate of Vietnam National University-Hanoi (LLB; LLM) and The University of Hong Kong (PhD). He was previously an Assistant Professor at The Chinese University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law, and a research fellow at the Centre for Asian Legal Studies of the National University of Singapore Faculty of Law. He has also held visiting positions at Chulalongkorn, Harvard, Melbourne, Nagoya, SMU, and Tsinghua Law Schools.
He works on comparative & constitutional law in Asia with a focus on the socialist and Confucian culture-influenced jurisdictions. He is the author of "Legal Reform in the Contemporary Socialist World" (Oxford University Press 2024), "Constitutional Change in the Contemporary Socialist World" (Oxford University Press 2020), and "Confucian Constitutionalism in East Asia" (Routledge 2016). He is co-editing four volumes on "Asian Comparative Constitutional Law" for Hart Publishing. He serves in the editorial board of the Asian Journal of Comparative Law and in the advisory board of the Indian Law Review.
Professor Jie Cheng
Jie Cheng is an Associate Professor of Law and Associate Dean Graduate and Professional Programs at the Peter A. Allard School of Law, University of British Columbia. Her teaching and research interests include Chinese law and government, comparative constitutional law, judicial politics, and the Hong Kong Basic Law. Before joining UBC, she taught at Tsinghua University School of Law from 1999 to 2019. Professor Cheng has held visiting appointments at the University of Michigan Law School, Columbia Law School, the University of Oslo Human Rights Center, Sciences Po Paris, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the University of Hong Kong, and the University of Toronto. She was called to the Bar in Beijing in 1995 and was one of the founders of the Tsinghua University Legal Clinic. Between 2006 and 2007, she was seconded to the Hong Kong and Macau Basic Law Commissions of the Standing Committee of the Chinese National People's Congress. Professor Cheng is an associate member of the International Academy of Comparative Law.
Professor Cheng has published extensively in both Chinese and English. Her recent publications include “The Legal Status of LGBTQ+ in China: A Law and Politics Perspective” in Constitutional Forum (2024) and “Identity Politics and Constitutional Change in Hong Kong: The National Security Law and 25 Years of the Basic Law”, in Hong Kong Law Journal (2022) She is an SSHRC Insight Grant holder for the research project “Judicial Politics in China” from 2022-25.
Professor Taiuk Chung
Taiuk Chung(鄭泰旭) is a professor at Inha University Law School in South Korea, where he teaches philosophy of law, history of constitutional law and politics, and Korean Peninsula issues. He earned his bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees from Seoul National University in South Korea, studied at Universität des Saarlandes with the support of the German DAAD, and has been a visiting scholar at Florida State University in the United States and Xiamen University in China.
Professor Chung has held various roles, including vice president, president, and editor-in-chief of the Korean Association of Legal Philosophy. He also served as a co-editor for the East Asian Conference on Philosophy of Law in Taiwan in 2012 and was an invited speaker at the East Asian Conference on Philosophy of Law in Beijing in 2016 and Hong Kong in 2018. His current research interests focus on the history of constitutionalism and democracy in Asian countries. He is eager to further explore comparative constitutional law and comparative legal thought.
Professor Jacques deLisle
Jacques deLisle is Stephen A. Cozen Professor of Law & Professor of Political Science and Director of Center for the Study of Contemporary China.
Jacques deLisle’s research and teaching focus on contemporary Chinese law and politics, including: legal reform and its relationship to economic reform and political change in China, the international status of Taiwan and cross-Strait relations, China’s engagement with the international order, legal and political issues in Hong Kong under Chinese rule, and U.S.-China relations.
His writings on these subjects appear in a variety of fora, including international relations journals, edited volumes of multidisciplinary scholarship, and Asian studies journals, as well as law reviews.
DeLisle is also a professor of political science, director of the Center for the Study of Contemporary China, co-director of the Center for Asian Law, and director of the Asia Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He has served frequently as an expert witness on issues of P.R.C. law and government policies and is a consultant, lecturer and advisor to legal reform, development and education programs, primarily in China.
Professor Akiko Ejima
Akiko Ejima is Professor at School of Law, Meiji University (Tokyo).
She teaches constitutional law, comparative constitutional law and international human rights law. She has been studying the relationship between constitutional law and international human rights law. Her current research project is exploring a possibility of a pluralistic, non-hierarchical and circulatory system for human rights protection which can combines constitutional law and international law and increase the effectiveness of human rights protection. Publications include Jinken Hosho no Shin-kyokumen (“The New Dimension for Human Rights Protection,” published by Nippon Hyoron Sha).
She has been a Liaison Member of the Science Council of Japan since 2014. She was a visiting scholar at Wolfson College, Oxford, a visiting scholar at Faculty of Law and Hughes Hall, Cambridge, a visiting fellow at Harvard Law School, a study visitor at the European Commission on Human Rights and a visiting scholar at King’s College, London.
Dr. Cynthia Farid
Dr. Cynthia Farid is an Advocate at the Supreme Court of Bangladesh. She has been a Global Academic Fellow at the University of Hong Kong Law Faculty since 2022, and a member of the Global Young Academy in Germany. She has extensive experience in research, legal practice, and legal reform with INGOs and legal rights organizations. Her research interests include constitutional law, legal history, law and development, and knowledge production processes in the Global South. She is also the organizer of two International Research Collaboratives at the Law and Society Association (USA) that focus on South Asian Legal Systems, and Scholar activism in the Global South.
Professor Dayuan Han
Dayuan HAN is a Professor of Law and the Director of the “One Country, Two Systems” Law Institute at Renmin University of China.
He serves as a Member of the Hong Kong Basic Law Committee of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, Honorary President of the Chinese Constitutional Studies Association, and Vice President of the National Hong Kong and Macao Studies Association.
Additionally, he is an Executive Committee Member of the International Constitution Association. His primary research areas include the Chinese Constitution, Comparative Constitution, and the Basic Laws of Hong Kong and Macao. Professor Han has authored numerous academic works, such as "Research on Asian Constitutionalism," "Basic Principles of Constitutional Law," "The Formulation Process of the 1954 Constitution," "History of Chinese Constitutional Doctrines," and "Constitution and Basic Law: History, Text, and Reality," among others.
Professor Andrew Harding
Professor Andrew Harding is a leading scholar in Asian legal studies and comparative constitutional law. He is a former Head of the Law School at SOAS, University of London; a former Director of the Centre for Asian Legal Studies (CALS) at the National University of Singapore (NUS), and founding editor of the book series, Constitutional Systems of the World (Hart/ Bloomsbury). He is currently Visiting Research Professor at CALS, Visiting Professor at the Law Faculty, Hong Kong University, and Law Faculty Senior Adviser at Thammasat University, Thailand.
Professor Harding has worked extensively on constitutional law in Malaysia and Thailand, and has made extensive contributions to scholarship in comparative law, and law and development, having published 20 books as author or editor. He is co-founding-editor of Hart Publishing’s book series "Constitutional Systems of the World", a major resource for contextual analysis of constitutional systems, and has authored the books on Malaysia and Thailand in that series (2011, 2012). His most recent book is Constitutionalism and Legal Change in Myanmar (2017).
Professor HP Lee
Professor Hoong Phun (HP) Lee is Emeritus Professor at Faculty of Law, Monash University. He commenced his academic career as a Teaching Fellow at Monash in 1973. He was Acting Dean (Aug 2009-Oct 2009, and Oct 2003 - Jan 2004), Deputy Dean (2003-04, 2006-09), Associate Dean (Staffing) (2001-03), Associate Dean (International) (1998-99), He held the Sir John Latham Chair of Law at Monash University from 1995-2014. He is an Emeritus Professor and a Teaching Associate, and co-convenor, with Professor Marilyn Pittard, of the Lucinda Lecture Series and the Fiat Justitia Lecture Series.
Professor Lee's publications include: Emergency Powers in Australia (2nd ed. Cambridge University Press, 2019) (co-author), Constitutional Conflicts in Contemporary Malaysia, (2nd ed. Oxford University Press, 2017), The Australian Judiciary (2nd ed. Cambridge University Press, 2013) (co-author), Winterton's Australian Federal Constitutional Law: Commentary and Materials (3rd ed. Lawbook, 2013) (co-author), In the Name of National Security - The Legal Dimensions (Law Book, 1995) (co-author). He is the co-editor of Asia-Pacific Judiciaries: Independence, Impartiality and Integrity (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Australian Constitutional Landmarks (Cambridge University Press, 2003), The Constitution of Malaysia: Further Perspectives and Developments (Oxford University Press, 1986), The Constitution of Malaysia: Its Development 1957-1977 (Oxford University Press, 1978), Australian Administrative Law: Fundamentals, Principles and Doctrines (Cambridge University Press, 2007), Constitutional Landmarks in Malaysia: The First Fifty Years 1957-2007 (LexisNexis, 2007), Constitutional Advancement in a Frozen Continent: Essays in Honour of George Winterton (Federation Press, 2009). He is the editor of Judiciaries in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2011).
Dr. Pui-yin Lo
Dr. Lo Pui-yin is a barrister in private practice for over 30 years in Hong Kong. He was educated in Hong Kong up to matriculation. He studied law at the London School of Economics and Political Science in 1988-1991 and was awarded a Bachelor of Laws degree by the University of London in 1991. He was called to the English Bar in 1992 and was admitted as a barrister of the Supreme Court of Hong Kong in September 1992. Following a period of research and writing engaged in tandem with his private practice, he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by the University of Hong Kong in 2012, based on a Thesis entitled: The Judicial Construction of the Basic Law: The Independent Judicial Power of the Courts of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. The Thesis won the Li Ka Shing Prize (2010-11). Dr. Lo's representative publications include: The Hong Kong Basic Law (LexisNexis, 2011), The Judicial Construction of Hong Kong's Basic Law: Courts. Politics and Society after 1997 (HKU Press, 2014) and Hong Kong District Court Practice (6th ed, LexisNexis, forthcoming). Dr. Lo plans to apply the current visit towards completing the writing and revision of his contributions on Hong Kong in the Asian Comparative Constitutional Law (Hart Publishing) series, and conducting research on the safeguarding national security system introduced and established in Hong Kong and the enforcement of laws under that system, which, in due course, will lead to publications.
Professor Mara Malagodi
Dr Mara Malagodi is a Reader in Law at Warwick Law School. She joined Warwick in 2022 from Hong Kong.
Mara is a comparative constitutional lawyer and socio-legal scholar with a linguistically-informed specialism in South Asian law and politics, human rights law, gender and law, legal history, and law and film. She holds her Doctorate, MA in South Asia Area Studies, and BA (Hons) in Nepali & Politics from the University of London (SOAS) and was a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). She is a scholar of the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple (Quatercentenary Scholarship) and a non-practising barrister in England and Wales.
Mara is also an award-winning documentary filmmaker; she trained at the Escuela Internacional de Cine y TV (EICTV) in Cuba in 2014 and her work has been screened at 2015 Raindance Film Festival (award for best short doc), 2015 Sheffield Doc Fest (nominated for best student doc), and 2015 Shuffle Film Festival (nominated for best doc).
Mara is the author of the monographs Constitutional Nationalism and Legal Exclusion in Nepal (2013) with Oxford University Press and The Constitution of Nepal – A Contextual Analysis (forthcoming 2024) with Hart Publishing. She is the co-editing for Hart Publishing a four-volume series on Asian Comparative Constitutional Law with Ngog Son Bui and a volume on Gender, Sexuality and Constitutionalism in Asia with Wen-Chen Chang, Kelley Loper and Ruth Rubio-Marín. Mara's work has appeared in the International Journal of Constitutional Law, the Journal of Law and Society, the Federal Law Review, Law and History Review, and numerous other journals and edited collections.
Dr Malagodi is on the expert roster of iProbono and ROLE UK, has worked as an external consultant for various United Nations agencies, and has been teaching at the Diplomatic Academy of the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office.
Professor Jaclyn Neo
Jaclyn Neo is an Associate Professor of Law at the National University of Singapore (NUS). She specializes in constitutional law, as well as law and migration. Jaclyn has degrees from NUS Faculty of Law and Yale Law School. She is a recipient of multiple academic scholarships and competitive research grants. Her work aims to forefront Asian jurisdictions and mainstream them in comparative constitutional law.
Jaclyn has published in leading journals in her field, including the International Journal of Constitutional Law (I-CON), Oxford Journal of Law and Religion, Human Rights Quarterly, and the Singapore Journal of Legal Studies. She is the sole editor of Constitutional Interpretation in Singapore: Theory and Practice (Routledge, 2017) and co-editor of Pluralist Constitutions in Southeast Asia (Hart, 2019), and Regulating Religion in Asia: Norms, Modes, and Challenges (CUP 2019). Jaclyn has also served as a guest editor for the Singapore Academy of Law Journal, Journal of Law, Religion, and State, as well as the Journal of International and Comparative Law. Her article on domestic incorporation of international human rights law in a dualist state won the Asian Yearbook of International Law’s DILA International Law Prize. Her work has been cited by the courts in Singapore and by the Supreme Court of India. In 2017, in recognition of her research on religious freedom in Southeast Asia, she was awarded the SHAPE-SEA Research Award.
Jaclyn currently serves on the Singapore Law Society’s Public and International Law Committee and the Singapore Academy of Law’s Law Reform Committee. She is an elected Council Member of International Society for Public Law (ICON-S) and the co-founder of the Singapore Chapter of ICON-S. Prior to joining the faculty, Jaclyn was a disputes resolution lawyer with WongPartnership and remains a consultant with the firm.
Professor Eugenie Merieau
Eugenie Merieau is an Associate Professor of Public Law at the University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne and a member of the Sorbonne Institute for Legal and Philosophical Research. She is the author of “Constitutional Bricolage : Thailand’s Sacred Monarchy vs. the Rule of Law” (Oxford : Hart, 2022).
Professor Raul Pangalangan
Raul C. Pangalangan is a Professor of Law and former Law Dean at the University of the Philippines where he teaches Public International Law and Constitutional Law. He has lectured at The Hague Academy of International Law, where he earlier served as Director of Studies. He has held visiting appointments at the Harvard Law School, Melbourne and Hong Kong universities. He has also lectured inter alia at the Irish Centre for Human Rights; Thessaloniki Institute of International Public Law; Salzburg Seminar on International Criminal Law, Humanitarian Law and Human Rights Law; and the Siracusa International Institute for Criminal Justice and Human Rights.
From 2015-21, he was a Judge at the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague, where he presided over the landmark trial on the war crime of attacks against cultural heritage. He also sat in trials and appeals involving child soldiers, forced marriages, and sexual slavery as war crimes or as crimes against humanity.
He is a Judge at the Asian Development Bank Administrative Tribunal. He currently chairs the International Labour Organization’s Commission of Inquiry on Myanmar. He is also a Member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague.
He is currently a Member of the governing councils of the Asian Society of International Law and the Philippine Society of International Law. He co-chairs the Editorial Board of the Asian Journal of International Law and is Editor-in-Chief of the Philippine Yearbook of International Law.
Professor Pangalangan received his LLM and SJD from the Harvard Law School. He also holds the Diploma of The Hague Academy of International Law.
Professor Gerald J. Postema
Gerald J. Postema has published extensively in legal and political philosophy and ethics. He earned BA degree from Calvin College (1970) and PhD (1976) from Cornell University. He began his teaching career at Johns Hopkins Unversity (1975-1980). Until his retirement in 2019, he taught philosophy and law at UNC-CH, since 1996 as Boshamer Distinguished Professor of Philosophy. On October 24, 2016 he was given an honorary doctorate by the University of Athens, Greece. Earlier (2013-14) he served as Arthur L. Goodhart Distinguished Visiting Professor of Legal Science (Cambridge University) and Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. He received the George J. Johnson Prize for Distinguished Achievement in the Arts and Humanities, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2012. He is a former Guggenheim Fellow, Rockefeller Fellow (Bellagio), Medlin Fellow (National Humanities Center), Fellow of the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies, and Visiting Fellow at the European University Institute (Florence). On February 20, 2014, he delivered the prestigious Boutwood Lecture at University of Cambridge.
Professor Dian Rositawati
Dian Rositawati is a Senior Researcher at the Indonesian Institute for Independent Judiciary (LeIP). She is also a Program Director and International Fellow for the Center for Human Rights and International Justice at Stanford University. Dian has more than two decades of law reform experience. In 2003, she was involved in drafting the Supreme Court Blueprints that have become the foundation of judicial reform in Indonesia and has played an essential role in their implementation efforts ever since. Since 2019, Dian has served as a member of the Judicial Reform Team at the Supreme Court of the Republic of Indonesia and provides advice to the Supreme Court on various reform issues. Besides working closely with the judiciary, she worked with the government and civil society organizations on various topics, including the rule of law, human rights, anti-corruption, access to justice and legal education. Dian holds a master’s in Law, Development and Globalization from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) University of London. She completed her PhD at Tilburg University in the Netherlands in 2019. Dian also teaches at the Socio-Legal Master Program at the Faculty of Law University of Indonesia and the Indonesia Jentera School of Law.
Professor Cheryl Saunders
Cheryl Saunders has specialist interests in Australian and comparative public law, including comparative constitutional law and method, intergovernmental relations and constitutional design and change. She is a President Emeritus of the International Association of Constitutional Law, a former President of the International Association of Centres for Federal Studies, a former President of the Administrative Review Council of Australia and a senior technical advisor to the Constitution Building program of International IDEA. She has held visiting positions in law schools in many parts of the world and is an officer of the Order of Australia and a Chevalier dans l'Ordre National de la Legion d'Honneur of France.
Cheryl Saunders has specialist interests in constitutional law and comparative public law, including federalism and intergovernmental relations and constitutional design and change, on all of which she has written widely. She has recently published The Australian Constitution: A Contextual Analysis (Hart Publishing, 2011) and is presently working on a monograph on comparative constitutional law.
Professor Dinesha Samararatne
Dinesha Samararatne is a Professor at the Department of Public & International Law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka where she has been working as an academic since 2005. Her research interests include judicial review, public participation in constitution-making, constitutional resilience, women and constitutional law, Guarantor institutions and the relevance of the global south in comparative constitutional law. Her recent publications include ‘Sri Lanka’s Public Trust Doctrine as Responsive Judicial Review?’ published in the Hong Kong Law Journal, ‘Dimensions and Dilemmas: Public Participation in Constitution-Making in Post-War Settings’ published in the Indian Law Review and with Anna Dziedzic ‘Asking the Woman Question of Constitutions: Insights from Sri Lanka’ in the World Comparative Law Journal. She has published three co-edited volumes Democratic Consolidation & Constitutional Endurance Comparing Uneven Pathways of Constitutional Development in Asia and Africa co-edited with Tom Daly and published with Oxford University Press in 2024, Constitutional Resilience Beyond Courts: Views from South Asia co-edited with Swati Jhaveri and Tarunabh Khaitan published with Hart in 2023 and Women with Disabilities as Agents of Peace, Change and Rights co-edited with Karen Soldatic and published with Routledge in 2020. She is Editor of the University of Colombo Review, a Senior Fellow at the Melbourne Law School Australia and an independent member of the Constitutional Council of Sri Lanka.
Professor Kevin Tan
Kevin YL Tan specializes in Constitutional and Administrative Law, International Law and International Human Rights. He graduated with an LLB (Hons) from the Faculty of Law at the National University of Singapore and holds an LLM and JSD from the Yale Law School. He currently holds Adjunct Professorships at the Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore (NUS) as well as at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University (NTU) where he teaches constitutional law, international law and international human rights.
He has published widely in his areas of specialization and has written and edited over 40 books on the law, history and politics of Singapore. Among his publications are: Constitutional Law in Malaysia and Singapore; Managing Political Change in Singapore: The Elected Presidency (Routledge, 1997); Lee’s Lieutenants: Singapore’s Old Guard (Allen & Unwin, 1999) (both with Lam Peng Er); The Singapore Legal System (Singapore University Press, 1999);); Essays in Singapore Legal History (Marshall-Cavendish Academic, 2004); Introduction to Singapore’s Constitution (Talisman); The Constitution of Singapore: A Contextual Analysis (Hart, 2015); The Evolution of a Revolution: 40 Years of the Singapore Constitution (with Thio Li-ann) (Routledge-Cavendish, 2009); and 50 Constitutional Moments That Defined a Nation (Marshall-Cavendish, 2015) (with Thio Li-ann).
Professor Arun Thiruvengadam
Arun Thiruvengadam joined National Law School of India University in September 2021 as a Professor of Law. His teaching and research interests lie in the areas of Constitutional and Administrative law in India; Comparative constitutional law; Law and Development; Law and Politics in South Asia; and Welfare Rights.
Between 1995-97, he served as a Law-clerk-cum-research-assistant to the Chief Justice of India, Justice A.M. Ahmadi, at the Supreme Court of India. He practiced law for approximately two years before the High Courts of Madras and Delhi and the Supreme Court of India, before commencing graduate studies in 1999.
Arun is a founding editor (and currently the co-General Editor) of the Indian Law Review (Taylor and Francis, UK). He also serves as an editor with the Asian Journal of Comparative Law (Cambridge UK) and World Comparative Law (Nomos, Germany).
Professor Xiaonan Yang
Xiaonan Yang is a Professor of Law at Law School and the Institute of Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao Development Studies at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China. She obtained her doctoral degree (S.J.D.) from the University of Hong Kong in 2009. Before she joined Sun Yat-sen University, she had worked in Intermediate People’s Court of Guangzhou and Dalian Maritime University.
Her research interests are in constitutional law, comparative constitutionalism, judicial system, legal interpretation, and human rights, especially in the interpretation of the SARs’ Basic Law and the legal framework of “One Country, Two systems”. She has undertaken some research projects in the relevant fields at national and local levels, and submitted consultant reports to governmental branches. She published more than 40 pieces of journal paper in English and Chinese, and engaged in teaching reforms on the courses relevant to Basic Law and the legal framework of Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA). She is currently a legal consultant of the Standing Committee of Guangdong People’s Congress about the local laws of the GBA. She is the deputy secretary of in the Constitutional Law Association and the Hong Kong and Macau Basic Law Association of China Law Society.
Professor Xiaobo Zhai
Xiaobo Zhai is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law of the University of Macau; and he writes on legal philosophy, Jeremy Bentham, constitutional theory, and Chinese law. His research has appeared in Law and Philosophy, Journal of Legal History, International Journal of Constitutional Law, etc. He has co-edited and contributed to Bentham on Democracy, Courts, and Codification (with Philip Schofield, 2022), Bentham’s Theory of Law and Public Opinion (with Michael Quinn, 2014), and Bentham Around the World (with Simon Palmer, 2021). His books include The People’s Constitution (2009) and China’s System of Constitutional Implementation (2009).