Customary Law was only used in very particular circumstances as a source of the law in the early period after liberation.
b) Developments and changes in the sources of Chinese Law under 'one country - two systems'
After 1997, the laws in use in Hong Kong will include not only the Basic Law of the Hong Kong SAR enacted in accordance with our Constitution, but also the laws enacted by the legislative organs of Hong
Kong together with the pre-existing laws of Hong Kong, that is to say the Common Law, the Law of Equity, Regulations, Subsidiary Law and Customary Law, except for those which are
in contravention of the Basic Law or have been amended by the legislative organs of the SAR. Thus it can be seen that the sources of the law adopted in the Hong Kong SAR will be very different from those on the mainland. The SAR will not only use enacted law as a source of the law which includes the Basic Law enacted by the National People's Congress, laws enacted by the legislative organs of Hong Kong, the pre-existing regulations and subsidiary laws of Hong Kong but also, it will maintain Case Law
as
a source of the law and the pre-existing Common Law and Law of Equity. In addition to this, there is also Customary Law as a source of law that is, the pre-existing Customary Law. Amongst these various sources of the law, the legal position and force of the the Hong Kong Basic Law is higher than other laws and the other sources of the law cannot be in contravention of it.
After `one country
-
two systems' has come into practice, we can see from the point of view of the system of sources of the law, two systems will have to come into force. The first is that on the mainland. It is a system of sources of law that takes the Constitution as the highest authority and the other laws, administrative regulations, and local regulations follow on from it (these local regulations include the autonomy and other specific regulations of national autonomous regions and the standard legal documents of the special economic zones). The second source of law is that in the Hong Kong SAR. It is a xyɛtam of sources of law in which the law derives from the laws enacted by the legislative organ of the Hong Kong SAR together with the pre-existing Common Law, Principles of Equity, Regulations, Subsidiary Legislation, and Customary Law. Thus after one country - two systems' is put into practise in 1997 there will be considerable changes and developments in the present system of sources of law which pertains in our country. It will have to include not only the systems and sources of law that are used in our country at the moment, but also those that are adopted in the Hong Kong SAR. The principal characteristic of the system of sources of law under one country two systems' is as follows: it will be at once unified (in the sense that the sources of law for the Hong Kong SAR will not be able to be divorced from the Constitution of PRC and just as various sources of law on the mainland must take the Constitution as their basis and cannot in contravention of the Constitution, so the Basic Law of the Hong Kong SAR must be founded upon the Constitution) at the same time it will be double-tracked (this refers to the two sets of systems on the mainland and in the Hong Kong SAR): it will be multi-layered, that is to say, the sources of law both on the mainland and in Hong Kong have various levels with different force and relationships of principle and subordinate. It will also have many forms (from the point of view of sources of the law we can see Enacted Law, Case Law and Customary Law). The establishment of this sort of system of sources of the law under one country two systems' which is at once unified, double-tracked,
be
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