Hong Kong has a curious mixture of laws old and new, written and unwritten, home-grown and imported. Made by various bodies in various ways with various results, these laws constitute a reasonably coherentbody of rules, principles, practices, procedures, assumptions, and attitudes. How are these differing sources of law best described and explained? How are they mobilized and employed? How do they achieve the coherence they seem to display, and can that coherence be maintained? Such are the questions which this book seeks toilluminate. They are vital questions for a legal system undergoing significant change at a crucial time in the political development of Hong Kong.