This is an admirably clear and concise account of the legal system of one of the last remaining British colonies. It is also amusing, perhaps unintentionally, for the quaintness of the system that emerges from its pages. For the reader from outside Hong Kong who is not familiar with the constitution, the book provides a fascinating and brief account of the contemporary use and operation of the royal prerogative as an instrument for government and law-making. It illustrates incidentally the adaptability of English legal institutions for consumption by overseas communities—and the ability of foreign communities to digest English arrangements.

The book gives brief accounts of some of the intriguing problems deriving from the reception of English law into the colony in 1843. From time to time questions have inevitably arisen as to whether United Kingdom statutes that amend English common law and equity have effect in Hong Kong, even though those U.K. statutes do not apply in Hong Kong. The Application of English Law Ordinance 1966 provided that common law and equity are to apply in the colony notwithstanding any amendment of those rules as part of the law of England by legislation that is not in force in Hong Kong. This created problems in relation to ancient statutes that had overruled the common law: for example, the doctrine of waste in English land law was regulated by an English statute of 1267. Was the effect of the 1966 Ordinance to revive the pre-1267 English common law of waste for Hong Kong? It has been held that common law rules can be affected by English statutes which abolished them, even though the statutes do not apply to Hong Kong, if they were in force before 1843. Clearly this does not solve all possible problems concerning the statutory amendment of the common law in England. But no doubt the ingenuity of common lawyers will be equal to the task of dealing with these problems as and when they arise.

The inventiveness of the common law way of thinking has also been exercised in Hong Kong by the doctrine that the common law and the rules of equity are only in force there to the extent of their “applicability” to the circumstances of the colony or its inhabitants: the courts have held that the English rule that a wife may not testify against her husband should be extended to a concubine; and apparently the “reasonable man” in Hong Kong is different from his English sibling.

Academic lawyers will appreciate the section on literary sources of law: until the 1960s there were no full-time law academics in Hong Kong and therefore there was very little secondary legal literature. The Department of Law at the University of Hong Kong opened in 1969, and in 1970 the Hong Kong Law Journal commenced publication, and this “has been of considerable value to the legal system”. Would that it were possible to say the same of academic law journals in the home country.