The legal profession’s troubling relationship with China
There has been considerable agonising in legal circles over the propriety of David Perry QC, who had accepted a brief to prosecute pro-democracy protestors in Hong Kong. One of the defendants in the case is the 82-year-old barrister Martin Lee QC, the founder of a pro-democracy party in Hong Kong, who has been accused of taking part in an ‘illegal assembly’. It seems now that Perry, who has refused to make any public comment since the story broke, has now withdrawn from the case. If so he has made a wise decision. He is not the only lawyer who has had to wrestle with the ethical question of how close
