Andrew Li Kwok-nang (born 12 December 1948) was born in Hong Kong into the prominent Li Pei-tsai family, the son of Li Fook-kau. Educated at St Paul's Co-educational College and its primary school (1954-60), he went on to Repton School in Derbyshire (1963-67) and read at Cambridge (1967-71), taking master's degrees in arts and law. Called to the English bar in 1970, he practised in Hong Kong from 1973, served as a deputy district judge in August 1982 and vice-chairman of the Board of Review in August 1986, took silk in 1988, chaired the University and Polytechnic Grants Committee from 1989 (also serving on the Judicial Service Commission), acted as a High Court judge in June 1991 and sat on the Executive Council from October 1992 to 1996. On 1 July 1997 Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa appointed him the first Chief Justice of the Court of Final Appeal, a post in which he handled some of the first constitutional cases under the Basic Law, notably the 1999 Ng Ka-ling judgment on the right of abode, which triggered the first interpretation of the Basic Law by the NPC Standing Committee and became a landmark of the judicial-constitutional relationship under 'one country, two systems'. He also served on the University of Hong Kong's council, as a steward of the Hong Kong Jockey Club, chairman of the Land Development Corporation and deputy chairman of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology's council. Awarded the Grand Bauhinia Medal in 2008, he announced early retirement on 2 September 2009 and stepped down on 31 August 2010 after thirteen years, succeeded by Geoffrey Ma. He became a visiting professor at Peking University Law School in October 2011 and, in 2017, warned that interpreting the Basic Law before a court ruling damages public perceptions of judicial independence, while accepting that the NPCSC's power of interpretation is part of the system and should be used only in exceptional circumstances. He and his wife Li Wu Mo-ying have two daughters.
As the first Chief Justice of Hong Kong's Court of Final Appeal, Andrew Li shaped the framework of the SAR's judiciary in the early post-handover years; the 1999 Ng Ka-ling case set the precedent for how NPCSC interpretation interacts with the courts, and his statements on judicial independence have long informed Hong Kong's constitutional debate.
Achievements
- 1997 · Appointed by Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa as the first Chief Justice of the Court of Final Appeal
- 1999 · The Court of Final Appeal's Ng Ka-ling judgment triggered the first interpretation of the Basic Law by the NPC Standing Committee
- 2008 · Awarded the Grand Bauhinia Medal