Wally Yeung

Wally Yeung Chun-kuen (楊振權, born 1950) is a Hong Kong judge. He has served as a Vice-President of the Court of Appeal since July 2011.

Yeung was called to the Hong Kong Bar in 1976. He was in private practice for a decade after that, and was thereafter appointed a Magistrate in 1986, a District Court judge in 1987, and in 1995 a judge of the High Court of Justice (known as the Court of First Instance after the transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong in 1997). He became a Justice of the Court of Appeal from 6 May 2002, along with fellow Court of First Instance judge Maria Yuen.

In 2007, Yeung took over as chairman of the commission of inquiry investigating alleged government interference into academic freedom at the Hong Kong Institute of Education after Justice Woo Kwok-hing recused himself to avoid the appearance of partiality; Yeung was chosen because, unlike Woo, he was not acquainted with either Arthur Li or Fanny Law.

Yeung was promoted to Vice-President of the Court of Appeal from 25 July 2011.

Yeung was one of the pioneers of judicial bilingualism in Hong Kong: in the December 1995 case Sun Er-jo v Lo Ching and others, Case No. 3283/1995, he was the first High Court judge to conduct a civil hearing using Cantonese as the language of the courtroom, and the first to use written Chinese to deliver a judgment.

A more controversial ruling of Yeung's was R. v Tam Yuk-ha, HCMA 933/1996. Tam had placed a table on the pavement outside her store, and was prosecuted for making an unauthorised "addition" to her premises after having been granted a licence, contrary to Food Business (Urban Council) By-Laws (Cap. 132Y) § 35(a). Yeung overturned the magistrate's ruling of guilt because the Chinese version of the by-law, unlike the English version, did not prohibit "additions" in general but only "building additional construction or building works" (his back-translation of the term "" used in the Chinese version), and in the event of inability to reconcile the two equally authentic versions of the by-law, he was obligated to choose the interpretation which favoured the defendant. In HKSAR v Tam Yuk-ha, HCMA 1385/1996, the Court of Appeal overturned Yeung's ruling and reinstated Tam's conviction on the grounds that the term in question did not merely refer to "construction" but any "erection" of additional works, but this was widely seen as far-fetched.

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