Hong Kong High Court judge Wilson Chan to be reprimanded again for plagiarism

Chief justice to take Chan to task for second time since 2023, after he copied large parts of submissions for judgment in repeat of earlier instances Judge Wilson Chan outside the District Court in 2018 after testifying in a case. Photo: Jasmine Siu Hong Kong’s chief justice will once again reprimand a High Court judge and require him to undergo training after he was found to have plagiarised large swathes of submissions for a judgment, in what is at least his seventh instance of extensive copying. In a response to the South China Morning Post on Wednesday, the judiciary said that Wilson Chan Ka-shun would face a “serious reprimand” from Chief Justice Andrew Cheung Kui-nung for the second time since 2023. The judiciary said that in light of Chan’s previous instances of plagiarism in 2023 and 2024, it adjusted his judicial duties last year and assigned him primarily to criminal cases that did not require written judgments. The move was taken “so as to avoid occurrences of excessive judicial copying in his judgments”, it said. “As Mr Justice Wilson Chan’s judgment in the present case involved again a substantial amount of judicial copying, the chief justice of the Court of Final Appeal and the chief judge of the High Court will issue serious reprimand to [Chan] again regarding the matter and request him to undertake targeted training,” the judiciary said. The chief judge of the High Court is Jeremy Poon Shiu-chor. Earlier this month, the Court of Appeal ordered a retrial after it found Chan engaged in “impermissible judicial copying” by plagiarising about 95 per cent of the defence counsel’s submissions in his ruling in a 2024 case. High Court judge Wilson Chan. The judiciary said that judges should adjudicate cases independently and professionally, demonstrating fairness and impartiality in their judgments. Photo: Handout In a separate ruling in another case issued just days later, the Court of Appeal found that Chan had also copied large swathes from the submissions of the parties involved, describing the practice as “highly undesirable” but ultimately immaterial to the determination of the appeal. There were indications that Chan had exercised independent judgment, the court found, citing his authorship of significant parts of the analysis. The judiciary said that judges should adjudicate cases independently and professionally, demonstrating fairness and impartiality in their judgments. Including some of the litigants’ arguments in judgments was acceptable “to a certain extent” and was “quite common” under the common law system, but excessive copying would raise questions about whether a judge had exercised an independent mind in reaching a ruling, it added. “Therefore, excessive judicial copying must be firmly avoided in all circumstances,” the judiciary said. Unhandled type: inline-plus-widget {"type":"inline-plus-widget"} Barrister Ronny Tong Ka-wah, a non-official member of the key decision-making Executive Council, said that apart from Article 89 of the Basic Law – Hong Kong’s mini-constitution – there was no legislation for how the chief justice should handle a situation such as Chan’s. Under Article 89, a judge can only be removed for inability to discharge duties or misbehaviour by the chief executive based on the recommendation of a tribunal of at least three judges appointed by the chief justice. Tong said that he would respect Cheung’s handling of Chan, but questioned whether the judge had sufficiently learned his lesson after his previous reprimand from the chief justice in 2023. In that instance, he was caught plagiarising more than 98 per cent of a plaintiff’s arguments verbatim in his judgment in an intellectual property dispute. “I think his behaviour suggests he’s not paying particular respect to the [chief justice’s] reprimand or to his duties as a judge,” Tong said. “That’s worrying. “I think you need to think about the way in which the public looks at the situation and whether or not it may lead to an erosion of confidence in our judiciary. I think that is a very serious matter, which I hope the judiciary will look at seriously.” The latest cases marked at least the seventh time Chan has been accused of extensive copying from counsel’s submissions. In 2025, the Court of Appeal said it would not rely on Chan’s judgment in a case concerning a will after it found his copying of the successful party’s submission to be “so substantial” that it gave a reasonable person the impression he had not exercised an independent mind. Chief Justice Andrew Cheung at the ceremonial opening of legal year in January. Photo: Sam Tsang Just days after his reprimand in 2023, he was found to have copied extensively again in a case concerning a local real estate company. He was also accused of extensively copying from counsel’s submissions in two other cases heard in the Court of Appeal in 2019 and 2020. In the 2020 case, the judge was said to have delivered a ruling in which 61 of the 70 paragraphs were verbatim reproductions of the winning party’s submissions. While the appellate court did not find that the judge had committed plagiarism in either appeal, it remarked in the 2020 case that it was “unfortunate that the judgment was written in such a manner that lends itself to a challenge of this nature”. Chan is among the few judges approved by the city leader to adjudicate national security cases. He was one of three judges who, in July 2021, convicted and jailed the first defendant charged under the 2020 national security law.