The Invisible Constitution in Comparative Perspective

nese Journal of Law (Faxue yanjiu 法學研究) 3–25 (in Chinese).

107 

See Koo Sze Yiu v. Chief Executive of the HKSAR (2006) 9 HKCFAR 441.

108 

See Ghai, Supra note 14, 210. Cf. Ip, Supra note 1, 813, suggesting that the TUI’s philosophy of 

constitutional adjudication was ‘[in] stark contrast’ to that of the CFA.

109 

Wang Shuwen (ed.), Introduction to the Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative 

Region, 2nd edn (Beijing: Law Press China and Joint Publishing (HK) Co Ltd 2009) 536–7 

(where the courts of the HKSAR were advised to examine legislative provisions on consistency 

with the Basic Law and in the case they find any such provisions in contravention of the Basic 

Law, they should not adjudicate cases in accordance with such provisions but should do so in 

accordance with other valid legislative provisions).

110 

See  Michel  Troper, ‘Constitutional Law’, in George  Bermann and Etienne  Picard  (eds.),  

Introduction to French Law (Alphen aan den Rijn: Kluwer Law International, 2008) 7–9. A 

near parallel might be drawn with the PRC’s socialist state, as the PRC Constitution provides 

in Article 2 for all power in the PRC to belong to the people, who may exercise state power 

through the NPC, the highest organ of state power vested with, inter alia, legislative power.

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262 

Albert H. Y. Chen and P. Y. Lo

Constitutional judicial review leading to legislative provisions being held 

invalid and null and void already existed in Hong Kong’s common law-based 

legal system during the colonial era, and rapidly developed after the enact-

ment of the Hong Kong Bill of Rights Ordinance 1991 and the corresponding 

amendment to the Letters Patent as the written constitution of colonial Hong 

Kong. After the HKSAR was established, the courts simply carried on the 

work of constitutional judicial review, now using the provisions of the Basic 

Law instead of those of the Letters Patent and the ICCPR as the yardstick 

for review. The legal consequences of a legislative provision being judicially 

determined to be unconstitutional, i.e., the provision being held to be inva-

lid and null and void, have remained the same as before the 1997 handover, 

though the HKSAR courts have refined the techniques of and remedies in 

constitutional adjudication.

By contrast, before the 1999 handover in Macau, there had not existed in 

this Portuguese colony a well-developed or mature system of constitutional 

judicial review. The jurisdiction of formally reviewing and invalidating uncon-

stitutional laws vested in the Constitutional Court of Portugal but not in any 

court in Macau. Nevertheless, the Organic Statute of Macau (1990) expressly 

provided that Macanese courts may not apply legal norms that were incon-

sistent with the Portuguese Constitution or the Organic Statute of Macau.

111

 

The jurisdiction of the MSAR courts after the 1999 handover to determine 

whether a legal norm is inconsistent with the MBL therefore finds a parallel in 

the pre-1999 legal system. As MSAR courts accumulated more experience in 

constitutional adjudication, they have developed jurisprudence on the limited 

legal consequences of a legal norm being determined to be unconstitutional. 

It is understandable and by no means surprising that this jurisprudence is 

distinctive and different from its counterpart in the HKSAR, given the influ-

ence of the continental European legal tradition in Macau

112

 and the absence 

under the MBL of a continental-style constitutional court with full power to 

invalidate unconstitutional laws.

113

111 

Cf. Eric Ip’s analysis of the pre-1999 Macau legal system with access to the modern ‘mixed’ 

system of constitutional adjudication in Portugal: Ip, Supra note 1, 825–6.

112 

Castelucci considers that the MSAR’s civil law based legal system, which does not recognise 

the binding force of precedents, ‘is associated with a high level of observance of the literal 

provisions of the statutory law, with a conservative attitude and a low level of judicial activism. 

This rigid attitude seems to be shared by courts in at least some of the former socialist jurisdic-

tions of Eastern Europe . . .’: Castellucci, Supra note 1, 697–8.

113 

Eric Ip has suggested that ‘the differing political transaction cost structures faced by the Hong 

Kong and Macau SAR governments’, as well as those faced by the NPCSC, have fostered the 

more vibrant ‘constitutional jurisdiction’ of the CFA in the HKSAR and the ‘TUI’s well known 

deference to the Macau government’, applying a model of strategic judicial behaviour; see Ip, 

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