In the years since the 2019 protest movement in Hong Kong, China has sought to securitise the territory using numerous legal tools. Through a dissection of Hong Kong’s post-2019 constitutional developments, this lecture examines how the prerogative and normative domains of Ernst Fraenkel’s “dual state” legal order can interact in ways that both facilitate and impede authoritarianism. In doing so, the lecture not only reveals the varied character of legality in today’s Hong Kong; it also illuminates the paradoxical roles played by law in authoritarian transitions. These insights are particularly pertinent at a time of global crisis for liberal constitutionalism.

 – Cora Chan