A former High Court of Australia judge is preparing to be appointed to Hong Kong’s top court and preside over some of the jurisdiction’s most major cases.
The autonomous region’s chief executive John Lee Ka-Chiu accepted the recommendation to appoint Patrick Keane to the Court of Final Appeal bench on Friday.
Keane was appointed a High Court judge in 2013 after serving as chief justice of the Federal Court.
The 70-year-old’s appointment as a non-permanent judge will need to be cleared by Hong Kong’s Legislative Council, which is stacked with China loyalists.
It’ll be the first time a foreign judge is appointed since two British judges resigned from the court in March last year, saying their participation would appear to be an endorsement of the government’s crackdown on freedoms….