Saving.
From the Secretary of State for the Colonies.
To the Officer Administering the Government of...NG KONG.
Date....
24
May, 1947.
393
N...........
Saving.
943
CONFIDENTIAL
R
My Confidential telegram No. 807 of 17th May.
Internment Camp Divorces.
The following are the reasons for the advice in paragraph 1 of my Confidential telegram No.807 that, except where the husband was, at the time of the divorce proceedings, domiciled in Hong Kong, an Ordinance purporting to validate the decrees would amount to an attempt to amend the Indian and Colonial Divorce Jurisdiction Acts and would therefore be null and void:-
(a) If the parties to the divorce were not domiciled in Hong Kong, the Court had no jurisdiction except by virtue of the Indian and Colonial Divorce Jurisdiction Acts, 1926 and 1940, as applied to Hong Kong by the Hong Kong Divorce Jurisdiction Order in Council, 1935. The Act as so applied confers jurisdiction in such cases on "the Supreme Court of Hong Kong". The validity of
the divorce is open to question mainly by reason of doubt as to whether the Supreme Court was, at that time, competent to pronounce decrees: the Act must necessarily refer to a properly constituted Court, lawfully exercising jurisdiction. A Hong Kong Ordinance purporting to validate the divorce would in effect enact that a decree pronounced under the Act otherwise than by such a court shall be deemed to be valid. It would therefore amount to an
amendment