A Legal Journey 2019 (English Version)：Imprint of the Times

An individual’s fate is often not in his own hands in the torrent of the times. For law-abiding common people, legal proceedings seem to have nothing to do with them. But in fact, every detail of the legal provisions is closely related to everyone's life.

TAM Nga-yin, Agnes is a student of the Law School of the University of Hong Kong. University education cultivated her spirit of pursuing justice and safeguarding the rule of law and judicial independence. She hopes that through law, she can help the disadvantaged, and this ambition has gradually formed through her growing-up experience. Her fate arranged for her to grow up in Hong Kong, and to have an identity: a Mainland child adopted by Hong Kong people.

In the atmosphere of a legal controversy over the issue in China and Hong Kong, in 2001, the Court of Final Appeal ruled that under the Basic Law, Mainland children adopted by Hong Kong people have no right of abode in Hong Kong, and Agnes had lost her case. However, as the public opinion and the Hong Kong people sympathized with Agnes at that time, the Director of Immigration exercised his discretion power to suspend her repatriation. In October of the same year, the Mainland granted Agnes a one-way permit and finally she was allowed to legally stay in Hong Kong.

After many years, the girl, who was not aware of her situation back then, was admitted to the Law School of the University of Hong Kong. When she studied the right of abode case in class, she began to understand the meaning of legal spirit. At the same time, when she studied animal protection law in the Law School, she took up volunteer work at SPCA and provided legal support for it, which made her understand that if the law is outdated and cannot protect the disadvantaged, amendments should be made. As such, she followed the instructors in the university to work on matters relating to animal protection law.

At the graduation ceremony of the Law School of the University of Hong Kong, the announcement of Agnes’s name from the main stage brought mixed feelings to the staff members, who had participated in the right of abode case that year.