Blackstone Chambers junior Tim Parker has been nominated for appointment as a Senior Counsel at the Bar of Hong Kong.

Parker, who is also a tenant at Temple Chambers in Hong Kong, is one of three barristers nominated today by Chief Justice Andrew Cheung of the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal (CFA).

While his appointment is an example of the international legal community’s continued engagement with Hong Kong, the number of overseas non-permanent judges sitting on the CFA has fallen to five – down from 15 in 2019 – following the retirement last week of former Chief Justice of Australia Robert French.

The other nominees for SC, meanwhile, are Catrina Lam of Des Voeux Chambers, who was called to the bar in 1999, and criminal barrister Priscilia Lam of Plowman Chambers, who was called in 2000. The appointment ceremony is due to take place in June at the CFA. 

Parker’s university education spanned Melbourne and Cambridge – where he was awarded the Whewell Scholarship in international law – and Hong Kong, where he was called to the bar in 2009.

He became a tenant at Blackstone Chambers in London in 2018 and specialises in public international law, competition law, public law and commercial dispute resolution, practising in both London and Hong Kong.

His imminent elevation to silk follows that of fellow dual-qualified Temple Chambers barrister Charlie Manzoni SC KC, a member of 39 Essex Chambers in the UK, who took silk in England and Wales in 2009 and in Hong Kong in 2015.

Another high-profile dual-qualified Hong Kong silk now based in the UK is former Hong Kong Bar Association chair Paul Harris SC, who practises as an associate tenant at London’s Doughty Street Chambers. He left Hong Kong in 2022 following the introduction of the national security law in 2020.

Opinion in the international legal community has been divided over the continued presence of overseas judges on the CFA since the imposition of the security law, which has been used to quash Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement.

According to the Hong Kong Free Press, French is the sixth foreign judge to depart Hong Kong’s highest court since last year. His term, which was extended in 2023, was originally set to end in May 2026. 

Many prominent legal and political figures in Western democracies, notably Baroness Helena Kennedy KC, director of the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute, oppose the presence of international judges on the court.

And in 2022, the UK’s two serving Supreme Court representatives on the CFA – Supreme Court president Lord Reed, and Lord Hodge – resigned from the court, with Reed citing the Hong Kong administration’s departure from “values of political freedom and freedom of expression”.

Among those who continue to sit are Lord Neuberger of One Essex Court, a former president of the UK Supreme Court, and fellow former Supreme Court judge Lord Hoffmann of Brick Court Chambers.

Parker’s chambers, Blackstone, had three members – Naina Patel, Fraser Campbell and Jason Pobjoy – appointed as King’s Counsel in England and Wales in March. In December, the set welcomed former Clyde & Co partner Sapna Jhangiani KC, who is based in Singapore, as a tenant.