་ ་ ་ལབ* 4*
A. Pierce:
the Court.
When only a small part
of the law is repugnant, it does not follow that the entire law will be
repugnant. Mr Alan Pierce will be able to provide us with a recent example of repugnancy.
The case concerned the application of the English Extradition Acts which applied in Hong Kong. The Extradition Act has a list of crimes for which extradition is possible. From time to time over the past 50 years, this list has been extended by other English Acts as the list of crimes has developed. A recent addition was the crime of
conspiracy to traffic in drugs. A Hong Kong Ordinance supplements the English Extradition Act and deals with procedural matters related to extradition. That Ordinance, by oversight, had not been amended to cover further extension of the English Act over the past 50 years. It simply said the Ordinance would apply to the English Act as extended up to 1935. It would have meant that the proceedings did not apply to modern offences and this was the argument of the defendant. The Court in Hong Kong held that it was the intention of the English Act to apply in Hong Kong up to the modern time. The wording in the Ordinance regarding the extention up to 1935 was inconsistent with the Act. The
Court thus ruled that the Ordinance should apply to all crimes up to the present time.
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