HENRY OH

Henry Oh is the co-founder and CEO of Socialutions, an Internet/technology company. He is also the co-founder of the Hong Kong Startup Association and was the Secretary for the Pilot Cyberport Creative Micro Fund program from 2009-2010.

He holds a B.A. in International Relations from UCLA, an M.Sc in Media Communications Regulation and Policy from the London School of Economics and a J.D. from Stanford Law School (where he assisted Prof. Larry Lessig with his research for his U.S. Supreme Court challenge to the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act. (Eldred v Ashcroft 2003). He’s been studying Internet regulation and policy since 1993.

JUSTICE MICHAEL HARTMANN

South China Morning Post

September 10, 2008 Wednesday

Judge in high-profile cases wins promotion to the appeal court

by Albert Wong

A judge who has presided over some of the city’s landmark constitutional and civil rights cases has been promoted to the Court of Appeal.

Mr. Justice Michael Hartmann has been in charge of the constitutional and administrative law list in the High Court during a busy period for judicial reviews, but will sit in the Court of Appeal from today.

His judgments include the upholding of a strict presumption against harbour reclamation, the finding of certain sections of the Crimes Ordinance to be discriminatory towards homosexuals and therefore unconstitutional, and the quashing of the fine against senior official Mike Rowse for the Harbourfest fiasco due to procedural unfairness.

For more of this article, read here.

More details on Justice Hartmann’s rulings.

CLIFF BUDDLE

Deputy editor, South China Morning Post, and former senior legal reporter.

Cliff started work as a journalist in London at the age of 17. He worked for 12 years as a reporter based at the Central Criminal Court (otherwise known as the Old Bailey) covering cases there for news agencies supplying the national newspapers.    These included terrorism and spy trials as well as a daily diet of murder, rape, blackmail and robbery. One of the first cases he sat in on in the UK was that of Denis Nilsen, a civil servant who killed 15 young men and boys after inviting them to his home.

In 1994 he was hired by the South China Morning Post and brought to Hong Kong.   He was the Post’s chief court reporter for six years, during which he covered a wide variety of cases including most of the big constitutional legal battles which followed Hong Kong’s return to China.  During this time, he also wrote analysis and news features. His stories included covering the landmark flag desecration and right of abode cases, the latter which sparked a constitutional crisis, and the trial of Yip Kai-foon, a notorious gang leader who was Hong Kong’s most wanted man at the time of arrest after a shoot-out with police.

Since then, he has worked as an editor on the opinion pages, news editor, and chief leader writer.  From time to time, he has also written columns on legal affairs.  He was appointed Deputy Editor in June 2005.

Having spent many years writing about the law as a journalist, Cliff decided to further his interest by studying the subject.   He passed the Common Professional Examination (post-graduate diploma in law) in 2000, graduating from Manchester Metropolitan.  Then, in 2005, he graduated from the Master of Laws (Human Rights) program at the University of Hong Kong.  His dissertation was on the legal framework underpinning Hong Kong’s political system.

DANNY GITTINGS

Danny Gittings is a barrister and program director in law at the College of Humanities and Law in the University of Hong Kong’s School of Professional and Continuing Education. He is co-editor of “Introduction to Crime, Law and Justice in Hong Kong” (Hong Kong University Press, 2009). He has a BA in Politics, Philosophy and Economics and a MA from Oxford, LLM in Commercial and Corporate Law including Modern Chinese Law from the University of London, taught at HKU SPACE. He was an editor and reporter at South China Morning Post (1990-2001) and deputy editorial page editor at Wall Street Journal Asia (2001-2007), and received the 1st prize in editorial writing from Society of Publishers in Asia in 2004.