Wally Yeung

This is a Chinese name; the family name is Yeung.

Wally Yeung Chun-kuen (楊振權, born 1950) is a Hong Kong judge. He has served as a Vice-President of the Court of Appeal since July 2011.

Positions

Yeung was called to the Hong Kong Bar in 1976. He was in private practice for a decade after that, and was thereafter appointed a Magistrate in 1986, a District Court judge in 1987, and in 1995 a judge of the High Court of Justice (known as the Court of First Instance after the transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong in 1997). He became a Justice of the Court of Appeal from 6 May 2002, along with fellow Court of First Instance judge Maria Yuen.[1][2]

In 2007, Yeung took over as chairman of the commission of inquiry investigating alleged government interference into academic freedom at the Hong Kong Institute of Education after Justice Woo Kwok-hing recused himself to avoid the appearance of partiality; Yeung was chosen because, unlike Woo, he was not acquainted with either Arthur Li or Fanny Law.[3]

Yeung was promoted to Vice-President of the Court of Appeal from 25 July 2011.[4]

Major cases

Legal bilingualism

Yeung was one of the pioneers of judicial bilingualism in Hong Kong: in the December 1995 case Sun Er-jo v Lo Ching and others, Case No. 3283/1995, he was the first High Court judge to conduct a civil hearing using Cantonese as the language of the courtroom, and the first to use written Chinese to deliver a judgment.[5]

A more controversial ruling of Yeung's was R. v Tam Yuk-ha, HCMA 933/1996. Tam had placed a table on the pavement outside her store, and was prosecuted for making an unauthorised "addition" to her premises after having been granted a licence, contrary to Food Business (Urban Council) By-Laws (Cap. 132Y) § 35(a). Yeung overturned the magistrate's ruling of guilt because the Chinese version of the by-law, unlike the English version, did not prohibit "additions" in general but only "building additional construction or building works" (his back-translation of the term "增建工程" used in the Chinese version), and in the event of inability to reconcile the two equally authentic versions of the by-law, he was obligated to choose the interpretation which favoured the defendant.[6] In HKSAR v Tam Yuk-ha, HCMA 1385/1996, the Court of Appeal overturned Yeung's ruling and reinstated Tam's conviction on the grounds that the term in question did not merely refer to "construction" but any "erection" of additional works, but this was widely seen as far-fetched.[7]

Yeung would go on to become the chairman of the Subcommittee on the Translation of Case Precedents, which oversaw a three-month pilot project from January to April 1999 to produce Chinese translations of twenty-five judgments of precedential value identified by the Judiciary, the Bar Association, the Law Society, and the Department of Justice.[5]

Others

In 1999, Yeung heard a major judicial review case relating to the right of abode in Hong Kong, Lau Kong-yung and others v Director of Immigration, HCAL 20/1999; he found that the seventeen mainland-born applicants were not entitled to the right of abode by virtue of their parents' Hong Kong permanent resident status until they had obtained Certificates of Entitlement, and thus refused to overturn the removal order against them by the Director of Immigration.[8]

Another widely noted case of his was Cheng Yin-fong v Wah Kee Vegetables and on Ting Newspapers, HCA 5970/1999, in which the plaintiff alleged sexual harassment by three men in On Ting Estate who used Cantonese profanity towards her after she confronted them for working shirtless; Yeung found no legal grounds to support Cheng's claim, noting that the men's shirtlessness was due to the high temperature conditions of their workplaces and that their foul language did not constitute a sexual request.[9]

Personal life

Yeung was born in Hong Kong. He graduated from the University of Hong Kong with a Bachelor of Laws in 1974, and obtained his Professional Certification in Laws from the same university the following year.[1] He is married to Rechelle, with whom he has a son Yeung Jun-wei (楊浚瑋, born 1987). Yeung and his family are aficionados of table tennis, and Jun-wei hopes either to follow his father into the legal profession or to become a professional table tennis player. Yeung has a positive attitude towards his son's table tennis ambitions and finds time to attend all of his matches, and the Hang Seng Table Tennis Academy voted him and his wife the organisation's most supportive family.[10][11]

References

  1. 1 2 "Judicial Appointment". Hong Kong: High Court. 3 May 2002. Retrieved 7 June 2013.
  2. ↑ "杨振权袁家宁获委任为香港高等法院上诉法庭法官 (Yeung Chun-kuen, Yuen Ka-ning appointed Justices of the Court of Appeal of the High Court of Hong Kong)". Xinhua News. 3 May 2002. Retrieved 7 June 2013.
  3. ↑ "楊振權接棒查教院風波 (Yeung Chun-kuen picks up baton in investigation of Institute of Education scandal)". Apple Daily. 21 March 2007. Retrieved 7 June 2013.
  4. ↑ "楊振權獲委任香港高等法院上訴法庭副庭長 (Yeung Chun-kuen appointed Hong Kong High Court Court of Appeal vice-president)". People's Daily. 22 July 2011. Retrieved 7 June 2013.
  5. 1 2 Poon, Emily Wai-Yee (2006). "The Translation of Judgments". Meta: Translators' Journal. 51 (3): 551–569. doi:10.7202/013559ar. Retrieved 9 June 2013.
  6. ↑ Ng, Eva N. S. (2009). "The tension between adequacy and acceptability in legal interpreting and translation". In Hale, Sandra Beatriz; Ozolins, Uldis; Stern, Ludmilla. Quality in Interpreting: a Shared Responsibility. John Benjamins Publishing. ISBN 9789027224316.
  7. ↑ Yeung, Matthew. "Assessing Parallel Texts in Legal Translation". The Journal of Specialised Translation. 1 (1). Retrieved 7 June 2013.
  8. ↑ Landler, Mark (31 March 1999). "Hong Kong Court Tells 17 They Must Return to China". The New York Times. Retrieved 7 June 2013.
  9. ↑ "Hong Kong: It Wasn't Harassment". Associated Press. 22 June 1999. Retrieved 7 June 2013.
  10. ↑ Lee, Colleen (14 April 2007). "Judgment day for ping pong parents". South China Morning Post. Retrieved 7 June 2013.
  11. ↑ "隔牆有耳：法官一家愛乒乓 (The walls have years: judge's family loves ping pong)". Apple Daily. 14 April 2007. Retrieved 7 June 2013.
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