Testing the Rule of Law: Authoritarian Institutional Shock in Hong Kong
This research investigates the impact of authoritarian institutional change on judicial behavior by analyzing the 2020 imposition of the National Security Law (NSL) in Hong Kong. As a sudden and exogenous intervention by Beijing, the NSL offers a rare quasi-experimental opportunity to study institutional influence within an otherwise open legal system. The study leverages a unique dataset of criminal case rulings from 2016 to 2023, encompassing both political and non-political cases. We focus on changes in judicial punitiveness and alignment with prosecutorial preferences, examining whether judges have shifted behavior in response to new political pressures. Key explanatory variables include judges’ career profiles, training backgrounds, and generational cohorts, while outcome measures track sentencing severity, prosecutorial alignment, and post-NSL judicial career trajectories.
Innovatively, the project employs large language models (LLMs) for structured extraction of legal actor identities, charges, and sentencing information from unstructured court documents. This facilitates a rigorous quantitative analysis of institutional change effects on judicial outcomes. By isolating the NSL’s impact, this study contributes to broader debates on the resilience of common law institutions under authoritarian pressure and enhances our understanding of how legal systems adapt—or capitulate—when confronted with external political shocks.