"Excavating how people on the ground civil society, the legal profession, social movements are impelled by convictions relating to sovereignty, democracy, and the rule of law, Lais rigorously researched, and theoretically innovative study breaks new ground for understanding the complexities of law and authoritarianism. Grounded in the fraught context of post-handover Hong Kong, Lais attention to the linkages of the economy, law, peoples, and politics, illuminates forms of authoritarian legality urgently relevant to our need to understand China in todays world. Beyond China and Hong Kong, this book interrogates pervasive and transnational discourses of national security, instructing readers on how to resist authoritarianism everywhere." Jothie Rajah, Research Professor, American Bar Foundation
"The struggle for the rule of law by Hong Kong lawyers is one of the great episodes in modern times of lawyer mobilization on behalf of liberal legal orders. Lais extensive research, and his illuminating analyses of mechanisms and discourses in Chinas export of authoritarian law, will richly inform wider theory on lawyers political activism as it also provides warnings and inspires resistance by lawyers in other times and places." Terence Halliday, Research Professor Emeritus, American Bar Foundation; Honorary Professor, School for Asia and the Pacific, Australian national University; and co-author of Criminal Defense in China: The Politics of Lawyers at Work (Cambridge University Press 2016)
"Yan-ho Lai, equipped with both civil society organization experiences and legal education, is the best author to write on legal repression and legal resistance in Hong Kong. His account of how China undermined Hong Kong's rule of law and how local lawyers pursued multiple paths to defend it in the post-Umbrella period offers a must-read analysis to understand the end of judicial independence since 2020." Victoria Tin-bor Hui, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Notre Dame
"In this thoroughly researched and incisively argued book, Yan-ho Lai brings together his professional and academic expertise to chronicle the 'rule of law' battle between the Hong Kong legal profession and the Chinese Communist regime. As authoritarian legality becomes a worldwide tendency, this brilliant account of Hong Kongs experience is a must read for the global public." Ching Kwan Lee, author of Forever Hong Kong: A Global Citys Decolonization Struggle
