Bench (pronounced bench)
(1) A long seat (without arm or back-rest) for two or
more people:
(2) A seat occupied by an official, especially a judge in
a courtroom.
(3) Such a seat as a symbol of the office of an
individual judge or the judiciary.
(4) The office or dignity of various other officials, or
the officials themselves.
(5) In certain team sports, the seat (literally or
figuratively) on which the reserve (substitute) players sit during a game while
not playing and on which “starting side” players sit while substituted.
(6) The quality and number of the players named as substitutes.
(7) By extension, the quality and number of professionals
or experts in reserve, to be called upon as needed:
(8) As a clipping of workbench, the worktable of those
engaged in trades.
(9) In interior design, certain fixed flat surfaces
(kitchen bench, bathroom bench etc).
(10) A platform on which animals or objects are placed
for exhibition.
(11) In farming, a hollow on a hillside formed by sheep.
(12) In surveying, a bracket used to mount land surveying
equipment onto a stone or a wall.
(13) In
certain legislatures, as “front bench” (the office-holding members of a
government or opposition who sit on the bench at the front of their side of the
assembly), “back bench” (those elected members not appointed to an office who
sit on benches behind) and “cross-bench” (those not members of the party in
government or formal opposition who sit on other benches). The terms are sometimes literal but depending
on an assembly’s architecture or the size of a government’s majority, others
can sometimes “overflow” to the physical “cross benches”. Thus there are “front benchers”, “back
benchers” & “cross benchers” (sometimes hyphenated).
(14) In geography, a shelf-like area of rock with steep
slopes above and below, especially one marking a former shoreline.
(15) In extractive mining, a step or working elevation in
a mine.
(16) In science (usually as “at the bench”), to
distinguish between being engaged actively in research and concurrent or subsequent
administrative functions.
(17) To furnish with benches (now rare).
(18) To seat on a bench or on the bench (now rare).
(19) In extractive mining, to cut away the working faces
of benches.
(20) In certain team sports, to substitute or remove a
player from a game or relegate them to the reserve squad.
Pre 1000: From the Middle English bench, benk & bynk,
from the Old English benc (bench;
long seat (especially if backless)), from then Proto-West Germanic banki, from the Proto-Germanic bankon & bankiz (bench), from the primitive Indo-European bheg.
It was cognate with the Scots benk
& bink, the West Frisian bank, the Dutch bank, the Old High German Bank,
the Old Norse bekkr, the Old Frisian benk, the Danish bænk, the Swedish bänk and
the Icelandic bekkur, all from a
Germanic source and all of which meant “bench”.
In the Old English there were the verbs bencian (to make benches) and bencsittend
(one who sits on a bench). The dialectal
spellings benk & bink are both long obsolete. Bench & benching are nouns & verbs,
bencher is a noun, benched is a verb & adjective and benchy & benchlike
are adjectives; the noun plural is benches.
The source of the idea of the “bench as a type of long
seat” is thought to come from riparian imagery (natural earthen incline
beside a body of water) and etymologists speculate the original notion was of a
“man-made earthwork used as a seat”.
Bench was from the late fourteenth century used of the tables on which
merchants displayed their wares and that may have been a borrowing from the
reference to the seat the judge would occupy in a court of law, that use
emerging early in the 1300s and coming soon to mean “judges collectively,
office of a judge, the judiciary”. Whether
it was actually an allusion to customers “judging the goods displayed” is
speculative. The use in team sports of
“the bench” being the “reserve or substitute team members” was drawn from the
actual physical bench on the sideline on which those players would sit while
not on the field. The earliest known
reference to the existence of furniture used for this purpose is from the US in
1899 but extending this generally to the “reserve of players” in baseball,
football etc seems not to have begun until 1909. In sport, the idiomatic forms include “bench
player” (one habitually selected only in the reserves and not the “starting
side”), “benched” (a player substituted during play and “sent to the bench”,
either because of poor performance or as part of a planned rotation, “injury
bench” (players substituted due to injury), “bench warmer (or “bench sitter”,
or “bench jockey”) (one whose career has plateaued as a “bench player”,
“warming the bench”)
Bench has attracted many modifiers describing use
including “bench grinder”, “bench saw”, “bench drill”, “sawbench”, “kitchen
bench”, “deacon's bench”, “friendship bench”, “bench easel”, “mourners' bench”,
“piano bench” (a “piano stool” for two), “preacher’s bench” etc. The noun & verb “benchmark” refers to the
optimal results obtained when testing something or someone on a “test bench”
although the use is often conceptual, a physical “test bench” not necessarily
part of the processes and even some structures in engineering referred to as a
“test bench” may bear no relationship to any actual “bench” however described.
Of seats
Bench seats ranged from the functional to the extravagant.
1971 Holden HQ Belmont Station Sedan (station wagon or estate-car) (left) in turquoise vinyl and 1974 Imperial LeBaron four-door hardtop (right) in chestnut tufted leather though not actually “rich Corinthian leather” which was (mostly) exclusive to the Cordoba (1975-1983) until late 1975 when not only did the Imperial's brochures mention "genuine Corinthian leather (available at extra cost)" but for the first time since 1954 the range was referred to as the "Chrysler Imperial", a harbinger the brand was about to be retired. Imperial's advertising copy noted of the brochure photograph above: “...while the passenger restraint system with starter interlock is not shown, it is standard on all Imperials.”; the marketing types didn't like seat-belts messing up their photos. While all of the big three (GM, Ford & Chrysler) had tufted interiors in some lines, it was Chrysler which displayed the most commitment to the extravagance although regrettably, some testers at the time reported than while they looked accommodating, after an hour of so, they proved quite uncomfortable. They contrasted the eye-catching seats in the Imperial with the "hard" pews provided by Mercedes-Benz which proved supportive and comfortable even after hours behind the wheel, concluding backs, shoulders and legs were a more reliable guide to orthopedic correctness than visual appeal, Teutonic austerity proving more luxurious than Detroit's rococo.
Boring: Rear bench
seat in 1963 Chrysler 300J.
The 1963 Chrysler 300J was the rarest (ie the one fewest customers purchased) of the eleven “letter-series” cars (1955-1965) and whether or
not related to its performance in the market, one thing which at the time
attracted comment was a rear bench seat replacing the eye-catching twin buckets
and full length console which had for three seasons appeared in its
predecessors (300F, 300G & 300H). In
1963, the industry, chasing volume & profits, had begin the process of “de-contenting”
their cars, either ceasing the availability of stuff expensive to make or
install or moving such items to the option list; by the late 1960s even
Cadillac would be afflicted. The Chrysler
“letter series” 300s had begin in 1955 with what many had assumed was a one-off
high-performance model created by mixing & matching trim from the Imperial
line (newly that year established as a stand-alone marquee) as well as tuning
the mechanical components for speed.
Existing initially to homologate stuff for use in competition, not only
did the C-300 sell in a pleasing volume but it was such a success as a
image-building “halo car” the model was retained for 1956 and dubbed 300B with
a further nine annually following until the end of the line in with the 300L 1965,
each release appending as an identifier the next letter in the alphabet (thus
300C, 300D etc).
Much more
swish: Rear bucket seats in 1961 Chrysler 300G.
However, as well as the dubious
distinctions of being the least popular and being the only one the series
between 1957-1965 not to be offered as a convertible, the 300J represents a
quirk in the naming sequence, Chrysler skipping the letter “I”. That was done for the same reason there are so
few “I cup” bras, the rationale being “I” might be confused with the numeric
“1” so most manufacturers go straight from “H cup” to “J cup” although some
plug the gap with a “HH cup” and there are even those who stop at “G”, handing
incremental increases in volume with “GG” & “GGG” cups; it does seem an
industry crying out for an ISO. There’s
no evidence Chrysler ever pondered a “300HH”.
Like Chrysler and most bra manufacturers, the USAF (US Air Force) also
opted to skip “I” when allocating a designation for the updated version of the
Boeing B-52 Stratofortress (1952-1962 and still in service). Between the first test flight of the B-52A in
1954 and the B-52H entering service in 1962, the designations B-52B, B-52C,
B-52D, B-52E, B-52F & B-52G sequentially had been used but after flirting
with whether to use B52J as an interim designation (reflecting the installation
of enhanced electronic warfare systems) before finalizing the series as the
B-52K after new engines were fitted, in 2024 the USAF announced the new line
would be the B-52J and only a temporary internal code would distinguish those
not yet re-powered. Again, “I” was not
used so nobody would think there was a B521.
1958 Metropolitan Hardtop in two-tone Frost White and Berkshire Green over black and white houndstooth cloth and vinyl.
Under various marques, the Metropolitan was in production between 1953-1961 and its cartoon-like appearance was a result of applying the motifs of the standard-sized US automobile to something much smaller and in that it was conceptually similar in concept to the more severely executed Triumph Mayflower (1949-1953) which took as a model the “knife-edged” lines of the Daimlers and Rolls-Royces bodied by Hooper. Although most four-door cars with front bench seats featured full-width cushions (one which one’s butt sat) and squabs (on which one’s back rested), most two door models had “split squabs” which individually could be folded forward, affording someone access to the rear passenger compartment without disturbing anyone sitting on the other side of the front seat.
1958 Metrolpoitan.
The split squabs erect (left), the passenger's folded forward to afford entry to the rear bench (centre) and the rear bench's squab laid flat to allow access to the trunk or provide a larger storage space (right). In modern five-seaters, the trend has been the so-called 40/60 split seat which allows two passengers still to sit on the back seat while extending the trunk space into the cabin, the origin of the idea reputedly the desire of skiers to carry their skis & poles without the need to fit external racks. The Metropolitan also had a fold-down rear bench, a common feature in many station wagons, SUVs (sports utility vehicle) and such but for the diminutive Metropolitan it was essential because there was no trunk (boot) lid. Though not unique, that was unusual in four-seat sedans (which the Metropolitan sort of was) although some sports cars also lacked the fitting including the early Austin-Healey Sprite (the so-called bugeye or frogeye (depending on the side of the Atlantic where one sat)) and every Chevrolet Corvette between the release of the C2 in 1962 and the C5 in 1998.
Bench seat for four: the improbable 1948 Davis Divan. The blue car (one of a dozen survivors of the
17 built) was restored by the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles where it
is on display.
In
cars and such, a “bench seat” differs from a “bucket” or “individual” seat in
that comfortably it can accommodate three occupants, the comparison with
furniture being the difference between a “chair” and a “sofa”. In commercial vehicles, bench seats commonly
can seat four but in cars the recommended (and eventually legal) limit was typically
three although the truly bizarre Davis Divan (1948) featured a bench allowing
four abreast seating for adults, something which would have been an interesting
experience for the quartet because a quirk of the suspension system was the
long, pointed nose of the thing actually rose under braking. The three-wheeled Divan was the brainchild of
“automotive entrepreneur” (some historians are less kind) Glen Gordon “Gary”
Davis (1904-1973) who put some effort into building the prototypes, not enough
into preparation for actual production but much into raising funds from
“investors”, a goodly chunk of which apparently was spent on real estate,
entertaining and mink coats for “friends” (with all that implies). He had a flair for slogans so many investors
were attracted but the project proved chimeric, Mr Davis subsequently tried and
convicted of fraud & grand theft, spending two years in prison. The name
Divan was used as an allusion to the car's wide bench seat. It was from the French divan, from the Ottoman Turkish دیوان (divan), from
the Iranian Persian دیوان (divân), from the Classical Persian دیوان (dēwān), from
Middle Persian dpywʾn' or dywʾn' (dēwān)
(archive, collected writings, compilation of works”), from the Sumerian dub.
The sense was of a sofa-like piece of furniture comprising a mattress
lying against the wall and on either the floor or an elevated structure. Part of the tradition of interior decorating
in the Middle East, in the West divans are sometimes called “ottomans”; those
with an internal storage compartment: “box ottomans”.
Four
American Airlines stewardesses proving the bench seat had “hiproom
for four adults; its foam rubber cushion beautifully upholstered in
long-wearing synthetic fabrics.” Dr Phil Tiemeyer's Women and the Jet Age. A Global History of Aviation and Flight Attendants (2025) explores the post-war aviation industry and the not always happy part played by flight attendants.Resembling
a large shoe mounted on a tricycle undercarriage, so much was strange about the
Davis Divan that in 1948 the four-abreast seating configuration probably didn’t
seem so startling. Still, the public
were aware of the unusual feature because among the many publicity shots
distributed was one of four American Airlines flight attendants (then called stewardesses)
perched, apparently happily, on the bench seat while Mr Davis looked on
approvingly. Presumably, the four young
ladies were relaxed and comfortable because the space available was rather more
than airlines these days provide for economy-class passengers in airliners. To this day, there are those who defend Mr
Davis and claim the corporate failure was a consequence of his managerial
ineptitude rather than constructive fraud but as well as the mink coats,
there were clues some of techniques used to raise what would now be called VC
(venture capital) were suspect, including the claim the movie star Greta Garbo
(1905-1990) was one of the investors. Ms
Garbo was by 1948 already legendarily reclusive, never gave interviews and
journalists who sent type-written questions (including a return SSAE (stamped
self-addressed envelope)) were ignored.
If any alleged “investor” was unlikely to contradict Mr Davis, it was Greta
Garbo.
Mannerist
but not quite surrealist: Some artistic licence taken.
Advertising for the 1961 Pontiac Bonneville Sports
Coupe (left) with images by Art Fitzpatrick (1919–2015) & Van Kaufman
(1918-1995) and a (real) 1961 Pontiac Bonneville Sports Coupe (right) fitted
with Pontiac's much admired 8-lug wheels, their exposed centres actually the
brake drum to which the rim (in the true sense of the word) directly was
bolted. Four could be seated on the Bonneville's front seat but the packaging efficiency was not as good as was found on the Divan; although the
car was 8.2 inches (208 mm) wider (78.2 (1,986) vs 72.0 (1,829)), at 63.4 inches
(1,610 mm), the Pontiac’s front seat was narrower than the 64 inches (1,626 mm) found
in the Divan. The inefficiency inside was reflected under the hood (bonnet). Although wide, even Detroit's large-displacement V8s of the post-war years were, by historic standards, relatively short, but to achieve the desired look (longer, lower, wider), the stylists rendered long noses and such was the capaciousness, a straight-8 or V16 could have been installed. Remarkably, as a marker of distinction, some of these machines even had their noses extended a few inches, just "for the look", creating even more waste space. Undeniably, something like the 1969 Pontiac Grand Prix was dramatic but it was emblematic of an era of self indulgence.
Had one
taken seriously some of the images used to advertise US cars in the 1960s, one
might have assumed Mr Davis had been so influential that bench seats might by
1961 seat five but sadly, the work of Fitzpatrick & Kaufman (best
remembered for what they rendered for GM’s (General Motors) PMD (Pontiac Motor
Division) took some artistic licence and one piece of exaggeration was width. The pair rendered memorable images but
certainly exaggerated things where they though it would help created what were even then admired as
simulacrums rather than something to be taken literally.
While PMD’s “Year of the
Wide-Track” (introduced in 1959) is remembered as a slogan (the original
advertising copy read “Wide Track Wheels” but was soon clipped to “Wide Track”
because it was snappier), it wasn’t just advertising shtick, the decision taken
to increase the track of Pontiacs by 5 inches (127 mm) because the 1958 frames
were carried-over for the much wider 1959 bodies, rushed into production
because the sleek new Chryslers had rendered the old look frumpy and suddenly
old-fashioned. That spliced-in five
inches certainly enhanced the look but the engineering was sound, the wider
stance did genuinely improve handling.
Just to make sure people got the message about the “wide” in the “Wide
Track” theme, the advertising artwork deliberately exaggerated the width of the
cars they depicted and while it was the era of “longer, lower, wider” (and PMD
certainly did their bit in that), things never got quite that wide. Had they been, the experience of driving
would have felt something like steering an aircraft carrier's flight deck.
Davis Divan: Even if the car wasn’t “real”, the brochure was well-done, reflecting
the influences of Art Deco and Mid-Century Modernism.
Although not in US terms a “big”
car, at 72 inches (6 feet, 1.8 metres) in width, the Davis Divan was comparatively
wide, as of course it had to be make the four-place bench seat viable. Still, with an apparently aerodynamic body
made from aluminium (taking advantage of the ample stock of the metal created
when contacts for military aircraft had been cancelled after the unexpectedly abrupt
end of World War II (1939-1945)) it weighed in at a svelte 2,450 pounds (1,110
kg) so the small, four cylinder engines would have delivered low fuel consumption
and provided adequate, if not sparkling, performance although if the shape was
as slippery as it appeared, the claimed top speed of 115 mph (185 km/h) may
have been plausible; as far as is known, no one has ever attempted to verify
the claim. In a booming economy in which
new cars were in high-demand, the package must have seemed attractive to
investors, especially as it was expected to sell for what seemed a competitive
US$995.
One of the mink coats made infamous in the court proceedings in which Mr Davis was handed a two-year sentence after being convicted of fraud & grand theft.
In retrospect, the projected
price was as remote from economic reality as the 990 Reichsmarks (RM) the Nazi
Party in 1938 promised would be the cost Germans would pay for a new KdF-Wagen. The Kraft
durch Freude-Wagen was the “people’s car” marketed by the Party’s Kraft durch Freude (Strength Through
Joy) operation which also ran cruise liners and holiday resorts and although
not one car had been delivered to a civilian customer by the end of the war, it would subsequently
enjoy much global success as the Volkswagen Type 1 (VW Beetle, 1938-2003). As late as 1943 some of the
340,000-odd Germans obediently still were making their weekly payment of 5 RM and it would be more than a decade before some received any form of refund. While over 21 million VW Beetles were made, Davis
Divan production only ever reached 16 or 17 (including three specialized
military (non-combat-vehicles) variants) and remarkably, at least 12 have
survived as curiosities in museums and private collections.
Of law
Bench seat for four: A gang of four Sceggs. Sceggs should not be confused with the homophonic skegs, a feature from shipbuilding. In courts of the common law tradition the terms “bench” &
“bar” date from the medieval age and remain part of courtroom terminology. “The bench” was originally the seat on which judges
at while presiding, the early furniture apparently a simple wooden bench as one
would find at many long dining tables and in the manner typical of the way
English evolves, “bench” came to be used of judges collectively and of the
institution of the judiciary itself. The
“bar” was the physical barrier separating the spectators and participants of a
trial from the area where the lawyers and judges conducted the proceedings,
thus the “bar table” being that at which the advocates sat and the right to
practice law before the bench being “passing the bar”, familiar in the modern
US phrase “passing the bar exam” or the English form “called to the bar”. As “bench” became a synecdoche for the
judiciary, “bar” came to be used of the lawyers although in jurisdictions where
there is a separation between those who appear in court (barristers) and those
who do not (solicitors) “bar” was applied only to the former and even after
reforms in some abolished the distinctions between certain branches of the law,
specialist practitioners continue often to be referred to as the “equity bar”
& “common law bar”. There’s thus the
apparent anomaly of the use of “bencher” (recorded in the 1580s) being used to
mean “senior member of an inn of court”, all of whom would have been members of
“the bar”. Presumably the idea was one
of “approaching the bench” or (more mischievously) “aspiring to the bench”. The bench-warrant (one issued by a judge, as
opposed to one issued by a magistrate or justice of the peace (JP) dates from
the 1690s.
An
illuminated manuscript (circa 1460) which is the earliest known depiction of the Court of King's Bench in session.
In England, the Court of King’s Bench (KB) (or Queen’s
Bench (QB) depending on who was on the throne) began in the twelfth century as
a court at which the monarch literally presided; it was a circuit court which
would, from time-to-time, travel around the counties hearing cases. The Court of KB was thus in some sense
“virtual”, whatever wooden bench upon which he sat becoming the KB for the
duration of the trial. Kings would cease
to sit as judges and the KB later was interpolated into the system of courts
(there would be many internecine squabbles over the years) until (as the Court
of Queen’s Bench), under the Supreme
Court of Judicature Act (1873), it, along with the Court of Common Pleas, the
Court of Exchequer and Court of Chancery were merged to become the High Court
of Justice, each of the absorbed institutions becoming a division. The Common Pleas and Exchequer Division were
abolished in 1880 when the High Court was re-organized into the Chancery
Division, Queen's Bench Division and the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty
Division (the latter memorably known as “wills,
wives & wrecks” in legal slang).
The origin of the KB is a hint of why a king or queen can’t appear
before a court in the UK or other places in which they remain head of state:
Although it is in a practical sense now a legal fiction, all courts of law are
“their courts” of which they remain the highest judge. The most famous (or infamous) relic of all this is the power of pardon which although no longer a personal power in the hands of the king, remains exactly that for a US president and is the only head of power in the US constitution not subject to "checks & balances", a POTUS able to grant pardons by ex-officio fiat. In that sense, the POTUS is the "chief magistrate" mentioned in the Federalist Papers (1788) although the authors used the term to distinguish a republic's president from European monarchs by stressing the execution of legal duties under the rule of law rather than sovereign privilege. Not all presidents have been much troubled by that distinction.
Benches afforced with foreign judges, the Chinese
Communist Party and Hong Kong’s national security law
Multi-national benches are not uncommon. There have been courts operating under the
auspices of the LoN (League of Nations;1920-1946) & UN (United Nations; since 1945) such as the ICC (International Criminal Court), the ICJ (International
Court of Justice) and the various ad-hoc bodies set up to handle
prosecutions related to crimes in specific locations (Rwanda, the former
Yugoslavia etc) and the UK had the JCPC (Judicial Committee of the Privy Council) which included senior judges from the Commonwealth. The JCPC functioned not only as a final court
of appeal for Commonwealth nations (a role for a handful it still fulfils) but
also as the appellate tribunal for a number of domestic bodies including some ecclesiastical
bodies, admiralty matters and even matters from the usually obscure DCRCVS (Disciplinary
Committee of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons). There were also the IMTs (International Military
Tribunal) which tried matters arising from the conduct of German &
Japanese defendants from World War II (1939-1945), the bench of the latter
Tokyo Tribunal notably diverse although those of the subsequent dozen trials in
Nuremberg after the first (1945-1946) were staffed exclusively by US judges. A number of former colonies also use foreign
judges (and not always from the former colonial power).
However, what remains unusual is the matter of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) deciding to have foreign judges serve on The HKCFA (Hong
Kong's Court of Final Appeal), established in 1997 when the HKSAR (Hong Kong
Special Administrative Region) was created upon Beijing regaining
sovereignty (under the IC2S (one country, two systems)) principle, with the
end of British colonial rule. At that
point, the HKCFA became the territory’s highest judicial institution, replacing
the JCPC in London. On the HKCFA’s bench
sits the Chief Justice (a Hong Kong national), several “Permanent Judges” and
some two-dozen odd “Non-permanent Judges” who may be recruited from Hong Kong
or from among lawyers of the requisite background from any overseas common law
jurisdiction. As non-permanent judges,
appointments have been drawn (from bar & bench) from Canada, Australia, New
Zealand and the UK.
Lindsay Lohan, foreign judge on the bench of The Masked Singer (2019), a singing competition, the Australian franchise of a format which began in the ROK (Republic of Korea (South Korea)) as King of Mask Singer.
While it may seem strange a developed country like the PRC (People’s Republic of China (the old "Red China"), the world’s second largest economy, a
permanent member of the UNSC (UN Security Council) and since 1965 the final member of
the original “Club of Five” declared nuclear powers) would have foreign judges
sitting on the bench of one of its superior courts, on the mainland the PRC operates under a
civil law system which, like the tradition in continental European, is based
primarily on written statutes and codes (with ultimate effective control remaining with the CCP), unlike common law systems, which rely
heavily on case law and judicial precedent.
As a British colony, Hong Kong had used common law and under that system
had become a major regional and international presence, something in part due
to its judicial system being perceived as fair and uncorrupted; it was a “rule
of law” state.
In the PRC there simply wasn’t
a body of judges or lawyers with the necessary background in common law to
staff the territory’s highest appellate court and significantly, at the time of
the handover from the Raj, Hong Kong was of great importance to the PRC’s
economy and the CCP understood it would be critical to maintain confidence in
the rule of law, investors and overseas corporations with a presence in Hong Kong needing to be assured matters such as contracts would continue as
before to be enforceable. So it was, literally, “business as usual”, whatever may
have been the fears about the political undercurrent. The growth of the mainland economy since 1997
has been such that the HKSAR now constitutes only a small fraction of the
national economy but analysts (some of whom provide advice to the CCP) understand
the linkages running through the territory remain highly useful for Beijing and
some long-standing conduits are still used for back-channel communications
about this and that. As far as business
is concerned, the operation of the legal system has remained mostly satisfactory, even
though the CCP ensured Beijing retained a reserved power to overturn the
HKCFA’s decisions, the "rule of the CCP" sometimes thought preferable to the implications of "rule of law".
The colonial era building where now sits the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal. Formally opened in 1912, it was built with granite in the neo-classical style and between 1985-2011 was the seat of the Legislative Council (LegCo).
However, in 2020, a “National Security Law” (technically
the Law of the People's Republic of China
on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong Special Administrative
Region and thus usually written in English as the “NSL”) was imposed. While not aimed at the regulation of business
or economic matters, it was wide in scope and claims of application (the extraterritoriality
extending worldwide), essentially extending to the territory many of the laws of
the mainland regarding “political activities” and matters of “free speech”, the
latter interpreted by the CCP in a way not unique but certainly different from Western understandings. Citing
the “political
situation”, two British judges in June 2024 resigned from the HKCFA,
prompted by Beijing’s recent crackdown on dissent in the city, something made
possible by the NSL. In his published letter,
one judge, his rationale for departure notwithstanding, did say he continued “…to have full
confidence in the court and the total independence of its members.”
As early as 2020, one Australian judge had already resigned, followed by
two others from the UK, both saying the Hong Kong government had “…departed from
values of political freedom and freedom of expression.” The CCP may have anticipated some objection
from the overseas judges because, since the passage of the NSL, no overseas judge
has been allocated to hear the “security-related” cases. The judicial disquiet seemed not to trouble
the territory’s chief executive, former police officer Ka-chiu (John Lee; b
1957) who said the overseas appointments would continue to help “…maintain confidence
in the judicial system and… strong ties with other common law jurisdictions.”
In response to the departing judge’s comment, he claimed the NSL had “no effect” on judicial independence and the
only difference was that “…national security is now better safeguarded.”
Early in June, the Hong
Kong authorities arrested two men and one woman attending a FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association (the International Federation of Association Football that, for historic reasons, recognizes more countries than the UN)) World Cup
qualification match against Iran, their offence being “turning their
backs to the pitch and not standing during the performance of the national
anthem”, a police spokesman adding that anybody “…who publicly and intentionally insults
the national anthem in any way in committing a crime.” Before the NSL was imposed, bolshie Hongkongers
were known to boo the anthem to express discontent with their rulers; that definitely
will no longer be tolerated. The match
ended Iran 4: Hong Kong 2 but despite that, more than ever the HKSAR and the
Islamic Republic have much in common.
