Transforming the Hong Kong Legal Machine: Gender and Familial Law in Jurisprudence

This book examines the law in relation to how it has responded to sexual and gender issues in the context of Hong Kong, and addresses the implications of those responses for the global context. It aims to develop a localized theory of justice which enables the analysis of multiple socio-legal issues arising in Hong Kong, a predominantly Han-Chinese society in Greater China, while also offering formulations for corresponding solutions. Unlike other books on Hong Kong jurisprudence and socio-legal studies, this book not only compares and contrasts different theories of justice, but also attempts to generate a philosophical perspective which can synchronize and re-organize a range of theoretical components via the lens of localisation. The author investigates theories of justice developed, respectively, by Rawls, Deleuze, Lacan, Zizek and from the perspective of Mahayana Buddhism, as well as (Orthodox) Han-Chinese Daoism. The book applies these theoretical perspectives in analyzing different socio-legal issues in post-97 Hong Kong, including transgender rights to marriage, domestic violence, sexual assault, child sexual abuse and race. The book concludes by proposing singular possible strategies, which include degenderization, desexualization, de-ageing, by which justice(s) can hopefully be re-manufactured and challenged. This book is relevant to researchers and students of law, philosophy, sociology, gender studies and cultural studies.