The Court of Final Appeal's ruling in the illegal migrant children case: congressional supremacy and judicial review

Abstract

Is there any objective legal ground – objective in the sense that it can be recognized as legitimate as a matter of jurisprudence even by lawyers and judges trained in the Common Law tradition – for the Chinese objection to the Statement? It is the purpose of this essay to demonstrate that a qualified ‘yes’ answer may be given to this question from the perspective of Chinese constitutional law, of which the Hong Kong Basic Law forms a part, and to explore into how the true legal position should best be stated.