HONG KONG BAR ASSOCIATION
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legal profession who have almost daily contact with these problems and then to ignore it. In a Colony such as Hong Kong, where the opportunities for public debate of legislation are of necessity somewhat rudimentary, it would seem that every encouragemnt should be given to people of real experience in any given field to place their expertise at the service of the Government in order to compensate for the lack of general discussion.
Quite apart from these considerations of principle, however, the Bar Committee is particularly concerned that legislation in respect of Chinese Marriage should be of a high standard. A number of proposals in our own report, are, it is felt, of considerable importance. Perhaps the most essential to the interests of justice (and this is a matter very much within the experience of the private practitioner in Hong Kong), is the inclusion of some form of judicial safeguard against the all too prevalent abuses of consensual divorce, as suggested in paragraphs 70 -73 inclusive in our report at pages
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42 45. (I ought perhaps to add that the adoption of the procedure advocated would not be of any particular advantage to the legal profession as such, as it would not be necessary in normal cases to have adversary proceedings.)
It is the hope of the Bar Committee that draft legislation will not be prepared in such a form, and presented with such haste, that serious discussions of the substantive proposals of the Government, and changes in them should they be shown to be inadequate, will be impossible.
Yours sincerely,
GB/ji Encl.
Chairman
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