Many years ago, when I was working in a local university and under some pressure to publish in more respectable places than newspapers, I wrote a long paper on a case in which the SAR Government prosecuted the Oriental Daily for the interesting and antiquated offence of “scandalising the court”.
This was back in 2001, but on the internet nothing dies. Readers who are interested in this judicial incident can still find the outcome of my efforts here.
The convenient thing about scandalising the court from my point of view was that cases are extremely rare, so I could read all of them. Incidentally I noticed that the Court of Appeal did not go to this much trouble, but no doubt they were busier than I was.
Scandalising the court consists of publishing abusive things about judges. Most of the cases concern allegations of bias – an old English case, for example, concerned the claim that an early campaigner for birth control could not expect a fair trial before a judge who happened to be a Catholic.
Modern writers have generally surmised that the offence was obsolete. People expect judges to be more thick-skinned these days and there is perhaps more appreciation of the usefulness of lay discussions of legal matters.
However the offence still crops up from time to time. I think the Oriental Daily case is still the most recent example, at least in Common Law countries. The consensus among the textbook authors was that it would only now be used to prosecute a writer who claimed or implied that a judge had been bribed.
This brings us to the doings of Mr Alex Yeung, who publishes his stuff on Youtube and similar places and is generally supportive of the blue ribbon end of the political spectrum.
His latest effort – report in English here – was a comment on the trial of seven men convicted of participating – on the white shirt side – in the Yuen Long incident of 2019. It included this fatal phrase: “I hope that the national security law (sic) and ICAC can investigate whether the judge had received any money.” Woops.
Only on rare occasions do I find myself in agreement with Ronnie Tong, but on this occasion it seemed to me that his assessment was incontrovertibly correct. He said that the comments were in contempt of court and that those who made them should be arrested.
The Department of Justice seemed to agree: “A spokesman for the DOJ said that “any person who is dissatisfied with court decisions may lodge appeals through the excising mechanism and should not criticise judicial officers abusively. Otherwise, it is against the law and the HKSAR Government will follow up on all the illegal acts.”
Really? Having ignored the law on contempt of court for so long the DoJ is finally going to have a go at one of its warm supporters?
The law on scandalising the court is perhaps an important protection for judges. Judges think so anyway. The law on reporting imminent proceedings is an important protection for defendants, which they are not getting. Law … sheep … wolves … need I say more?
tim's experiment 
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