Kevin commenced as a PhD Student at Melbourne Law School in February 2024, and is a non-resident Senior Fellow with Georgetown University’s Center for Asian Law. He has Bachelor of Laws (Honours), Master of Commerce and Master of Laws degrees from the University of Melbourne. Prior to returning to Australia in 2022, Kevin had over 17 years’ experience as a private practice lawyer (including over 8 years as a partner) with international law firms, as well as a stint as an in-house lawyer at a Big Four accounting firm. His practice specialisations were in financial services regulatory investigations and proceedings, and commercial litigation.
Outside of work and studies, Kevin has been an active advocate for Hong Kong rule of law, democracy and human rights, and was a founding co-convenor of the now defunct Hong Kong Progressive Lawyers Group. He regularly appears in interviews and writes commentaries for Australian, international and Hong Kong media to give views on Hong Kong, China, and Australia-China relations issues, and is fluent in English, Cantonese and Mandarin.
Kevin’s research interests straddle both private and public law with an Asian focus, including financial regulation, commercial law, comparative public law, and the intersection between law, political systems and society.
Thesis Title
Hong Kong as an International Financial Centre post-1997: a Dual State analysis
Thesis Summary
This thesis examines the impact of China’s and Hong Kong’s encroaching authoritarianism on Hong Kong as an international financial centre since 1997, through the lens of Nazi-era German Jewish lawyer and activist Ernst Fraenkel, who saw dictatorship as a ‘Dual State’. In his words, this consist of ‘a “normative state” … that generally respects its own laws, and a “prerogative state” … that violates the very same laws.’ Modern ‘Dual State’ scholarship has tended to focus on constitutional law and human rights, and this thesis seeks to focus instead on financial and business regulation, with Hong Kong as case study.
- Administrative/Public Law
- Asian Law
- Banking and Financial Law
- Chinese Law
- Commercial Law
- Comparative Constitutional Law
- Constitutional Law