A Tribute to Our Teachers
(In alphabetical order)
Bernard Downey
Professor Dafydd Evans (1938-2006)
- Professor Dafydd Evans was one of the three founding members of the Law Faculty. He graduated from the University of Wales and Oxford University before beginning his academic career at the London School of Economics. He joined The University of Hong Kong in 1966 and served as the Dean of Social Sciences during 1967-1968, then Head of the Department of Law from 1969 (when the Department was first established) to 1978. He continued to be the Head of the School of Law from 1978 to 1984 and Dean of the then newly established Law Faculty from 1984 to 1987. He is remembered by telling the students on their first day in class “Look to your left and look to your right; one of you will not be here next year!” His contribution to legal education rightly gained him the award of an OBE. The Faculty is much in his debt.
Scholarship(s)/Prize(s) established:
– Professor Dafydd Evans Memorial Scholarship (by the Class of 1972)
Professor Betty Ho (1948-2010)
- Professor Betty Ho, who taught at the Faculty from 1988 until 2002, was one of the most loved teachers of all time, she had inspired and changed lives of many of her students. Professor Ho was a prolific scholar who published widely in the areas of contract, corporate and securities law. She made immense contributions to scholarship and was highly respected in the legal community. Her works had a profound impact on the development and reform of corporate and securities law in Hong Kong. Professor Ho also had a deep commitment to make an impact on the development of the legal system in China and, as a result, she meticulously translated all of her own work from English to Chinese herself. In 2002, she left HKU to teach at Tsinghua University.
Scholarship(s)/Prize(s) established:
– Betty Ho Prize in Law
– Betty Ho Essay Prize on Contract Law
John Rear
Professor Michael Wilkinson (1945-2019)
- Professor Michael Wilkinson was a law graduate of Cambridge University and a barrister of the Inner Temple. He started his academic career at Fitzwilliam College, University of Cambridge, where Andrew Li, subsequently the first Chief Justice of the HKSAR, was a student in his tutorials. He subsequently taught for 13 years in Africa – first in Uganda and then in Malawi, before joining HKU in 1983, where he became the longest-serving teacher in the Faculty of Law (1983-2019), teaching several generations of law students the PCLL subjects of Conveyancing, Civil Procedure, Professional Ethics, and Advocacy. He had published extensively in these fields.
Professor Wilkinson served as Associate Dean of our Faculty of Law in 1990-91, Head of the Department of Professional Legal Education in 1991-93 and 1996-2005, and as Chairman of the Board of Studies of the Faculty of Law in 2006-2015. He had also served as the University’s Public Orator, a member of the Hong Kong Law Reform Commission, and a member of many committees of the Law Society of Hong Kong. In 2018, Professor Wilkinson became the second Honorary Member for Life admitted by the Law Society of Hong Kong in its history, an honour bestowed upon him in recognition of his tremendous contribution to legal education and to the legal field in Hong Kong.
Scholarship(s)/Prize(s) established:
– Michael Wilkinson Memorial Fund Scholarship
– Michael Wilkinson Scholarship
Professor Peter Willoughby
- Professor Peter Willoughby joined the University of Hong Kong in 1973 and was appointed the Second Chair of Law in 1975. The Faculty is indebted to Professor Willoughby for his efforts in developing the programme for the Postgraduate Certificate in Laws (PCLL), a professional qualification for the practice of law. The Department of Professional Legal Education was established in 1984 and he became the first head and professor of the department. In working out the programme for the PCLL he sought to link together the two stages into which the study of law can be divided – the academic and the professional; his aim was to produce a continuum without the sharp division that sometimes exists between these two stages of legal education. Professor Willoughby has lectured publicly, published a number of books and also written extensively for leading law journals on many aspects of law, particularly in the fields of Company Law, Conveyancing and Revenue Law. He left the University in 1986 and was awarded an Honorary University Fellowship in 1999.
Scholarship(s)/Prize(s) established:
– Peter Willoughby Memorial Prize for Criminal Law I & II
– Peter Willoughby Memorial Prize for Land Law I & II
– Peter Willoughby Memorial Prize in Tax Law
Professor Julius Yam (1992-2024)
- Julius Yam graduated with first class honours from the University of Hong Kong, receiving his LLB in 2015, and then went on to obtain an LLM from the University of Chicago (2017) and a DPhil in Law from Trinity College, University of Oxford (2022). His postgraduate studies were funded by the RC Lee Centenary Scholarship. Julius joined our faculty as an Assistant Professor in 2021. Julius was a brilliant researcher and won the Faculty Outstanding Teaching Award in 2023. He valued each and every student and sought to instil a sense of purpose in learning. Colleagues will always remember Julius: as confident, forthright, unconventional, authentic, witty, full of hope, and bursting with energy, questions, and solutions. Within a short span of time, he made many friends in the local and international academy.
Scholarship(s)/Prize(s) established:
– Julius Yam Prize in Constitutional Law for JD Students
