In the case of Hong Kong, this is hard enough without judges apologising for, or legitimising, repression. Since 2020, at least 10 overseas judges have either resigned or declined to renew their terms on the court. Lord Jonathan Sumption from Britain, in his resignation op-ed, warned that Hong Kong’s courts were operating in a “paranoid atmosphere” and that the city was “slowly becoming a totalitarian state”. Another British judge, Lord Lawrence Collins, announced that he left “because of the political situation in Hong Kong.” And just last spring, Australia’s former Chief Justice, Robert French, resigned, declaring that the overseas-judge role had become “increasingly anachronistic and arguably cosmetic”.
What’s puzzling about Young’s decision to remain on the court is that in 2022, following advocacy from human rights groups, he joined two retired Irish judges in resigning from the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) courts. “Underlying the criticisms,” he explained then, “are issues of perception: how sitting as a judge on the DIFC Courts may be seen by others.”
Well, quite.
Retired Irish Senior Counsel Bill Shipsey, whose op-ed in the Irish Times in July 2022 resulted in the resignation of Young and the Irish judges from the DIFC courts, said: “I applauded William Young and the retired Irish judges when they did the right and proper thing in 2023, refusing to lend their names to a commercial court system of a human rights-abusing country and regime. I cannot understand how the same reasons that caused Judge Young to resign from a commercial court in Dubai – which was never going to hear issues of personal liberty or life and death – could agree to sit on an appeals court of a post-national emergency law Hong Kong which has stifled and silenced all dissent and opposition. He and the other Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal judges must surely know in their hearts that they are giving cover to an authoritarian regime that denies basic and fundamental human rights?”
Young must also know that Hong Kong officials trumpet his presence on the court in an attempt to legitimise it. In a July 2025 speech in Paris, Justice Secretary Paul Lam – himself sanctioned by the US for leading prosecutions of pro-democracy activists – touted Young’s arrival as proof that the city’s system is “extremely credible”.
The reality is very different. Young and the other overseas judges – Australia’s James Allsop, William Gummow and Patrick Keane, and the UK’s Lord David Neuberger and Lord Leonard Hoffmann – are not safeguarding human rights. In cases where some of the international judges have sat, they have confirmed repressive state verdicts against pro-democracy figures Jimmy Lai and Chow Hang-tung. Lai was found guilty of “collusion with foreign forces” in a sham trial in December and was sentenced to 20 years in prison this week.
By way of explanation, Young has only offered: “I would not accept appointment to that court unless satisfied it was proper for me to do so.” A typical four-week assignment pays around HK$400,000 (roughly $88,000) per month, plus first-class travel and hotel suites.
To its credit, Wellington’s own stance has been much better: after Beijing imposed the National Security Law in 2020, the New Zealand Government suspended its extradition treaty with Hong Kong and has repeatedly expressed concern, publicly and privately, about the territory’s rapidly shrinking freedoms.
Young has been lauded in Britain for his previous work – he is an Honorary Bencher of the Middle Temple in London and an Honorary Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. He also holds an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the University of Canterbury in New Zealand.
One Hong Kong lawyer now in exile, whose identity we have anonymised to protect against possible retaliation against his family still there, said: “Young is being used by the authorities to whitewash a repressive, anti-democratic regime. No judge should be proud to be part of that. And history will not look kindly on those who do.”
In November last year, when I spoke at the UK Parliament, I affirmed that international judges still serving in the Hong Kong court system should know we and others in the human rights community are scrutinising their decisions, especially with respect to the NSL.
Quite simply, Judge Young and the others should do the right thing and resign from the court.
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