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Opinion
Why the justice secretary’s senior counsel push has merit
- Teresa Cheng’s proposal seeks to end unjustifiable discrimination between legal officers performing identical or similar duties
- The situation of Hong Kong’s solicitor-advocates also requires redress
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Grenville Cross SC is a criminal justice analyst, a barrister (senior counsel), and a life senator of the International Association of Prosecutors (IAP).
The proposal by Secretary for Justice Teresa Cheng Yeuk-wah that legal officers in her department, who may be barristers or solicitors, should be eligible for appointment as senior counsel, or “silk”, seeks to rectify a long-standing anomaly. If a legal officer is a solicitor, he or she cannot currently apply for the rank of senior counsel, irrespective of actual practice.
If, therefore, a solicitor is undertaking responsibilities at the highest level to an impeccable standard, which can and does happen, given that the Department of Justice treats all its legal officers equally, it is unfair to deny him or her the right to seek what Chief Justice Andrew Cheung Kui-nung calls a “badge of responsibility”.
The unsatisfactory situation was highlighted recently by the experience of one of Cheng’s senior prosecutors, who took silk last month. Although she was regularly conducting cases in the highest courts, she could not at the time apply for silk because she was a solicitor.
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