ABSTRACT
In an authoritarian state, public opinion can hardly be measured. The People’s Republic of China will resume sovereignty over Hong Kong on 1 July 1997. Therefore, it is timely to capture the attitudes and values of the Chinese population of Hong Kong toward the Common Law judicial system while Hong Kong is a quasi-police state under the direct rule of a democratic government in Great Britain. Opinions, hearsay, and personal experiences often are the only sources of information on which most jurisprudential schools have relied. In traditional Chinese legal culture, as well as in the Common Law, law and legal theory are formulated by a group that makes up a small portion of the population. In one case, the group consists of ruling elites educated in Confucian classics, and in the other of judges and legislators trained at Oxbridge. Laws in these cultures have often been said to reflect the desire of the ruling classes to maintain the status quo.
