Hong Kong Judge Resigns Over Plagiarism

Earlier today, Hong Kong High Court Judge Wilson Chan Ka-shun announced that he will be taking an early retirement following a series of plagiarism scandals over the past year.

The move comes at the request of Chief Justice Andrew Cheung Kui-nung, who said that Chan’s actions were “totally unacceptable” and hoped that the actions against Chan would serve as a warning to other judges to avoid the same behavior.

Chan, who is 64, will be retiring roughly six years ahead of the normal retirement age of 70. The latest allegations mark the fourth time in recent years that Chan has been accused of plagiarism.

These allegations of plagiarism have not just resulted in ethical issues, but also practical ones. Some of the cases Chan oversaw were overturned on appeal due to his heavy-handed copying. He was even moved to a criminal court, a space where lengthy judgments are typically not required.

Unfortunately, that was not enough to prevent still more plagiarism issues, with yet another case being overturned on appeal and sent back to the lower court for a retrial before a different judge.

To understand what happened, we first need to go back to 2023, when Chan was first accused of plagiarism.

The Story So Far

The story begins in earnest in June 2020. That was when Chan issued a judgment in a business dispute that, according to the losing party, was largely copied verbatim from the plaintiff’s submissions. The defendants appealed the case, arguing that the judgment was not an independent work.

Then, in June 2023, the appeals court examined the ruling and found that it was 98% copied from the plaintiff’s submissions with no full, original sentences in the entire judgment. It found that the changes made were cosmetic only and that there was no evidence that Chan had considered the defendants’ submissions.

Days later, another one of Chan’s decisions came under fire. This one, filed earlier in the year, was also found to be heavily plagiarized from counsel’s submissions. In that case, the Court of Appeal announced that it would give “little to no weight” to Chan’s judgment.

Following these stories, Chan was given a “serious reprimand” by Chief Justice Andrew Cheung and was moved to handle mostly criminal cases, which rely on oral judgments rather than written ones.

However, despite the warnings and the reprimand, Chan continued to plagiarize. In 2024, one of his judgments was found to be 95% copied from one of the parties’ submissions. That case was overturned on appeal as well and sent back to the lower court for a retrial with a different judge.

Local media is reporting several more instances of plagiarism, including several from 2025 and at least two from this year. It is unclear what will happen to those cases.

As the issues mounted, Chen began to face pressure from the Chief Justice to resign. Now he has done so, effective July 31, 2026. His retirement will be roughly six years ahead of the normal retirement age, which was extended to 70 in 2019.

A Giant Mess

When it comes to plagiarism, authorship and citation, the legal profession is one of the more interesting case studies.

In the field, some degree of copying is not just expected, it’s a requirement. There are often right ways and wrong ways to say certain things and coming up with an original take can border on malpractice. Effectiveness is much more important than originality.

But that doesn’t mean that one can just copy and paste at will. Every case is unique and those involved with a case need to invest the time and effort to understand and argue those specific facts. Plagiarism in the legal world is still very much an ethical issue and one that can carry serious consequences.

But what makes Chan’s case stand out is that he is not a lawyer, he’s a judge.

Judges, by their very nature, a supposed to be impartial. They need to consider the totality of the evidence and make independent decisions based on the facts before them. But when a judge simply copies over 90% of their decisions from one of the parties, it destroys that impartiality.

The amount that Chan copied from party submissions blows straight through any norm in the legal world. While I would expect to see significant amounts of copying from counsel submissions, 90+ percent from just one party is beyond the pale.

But what makes this story worse is that he continued to plagiarize despite receiving warnings and a reprimand. He was given a second chance, one I would argue he should not have received, and proceeded to do the exact same thing again and again and again.

As we discussed above, these acts of plagiarism don’t just raise questions about Chan’s ethics, they have practical consequences. How much money and time, both public and private, was wasted on retrying these cases? Everyone involved in these cases other than Chan is paying dearly for his actions.

Perhaps the worst part is just how stupid this plagiarism was. He didn’t plagiarize a few sentences from an obscure ruling or filing, he copied entire documents submitted by the parties in the case. Both sides will be extremely familiar with those documents and the losing party would be absolutely insane not to pounce on that plagiarism when filing an appeal.

As frustrating as this story is, I can’t put all the blame on Chan. To that end, there is plenty of blame to go around.

Bottom Line

I understand that the Chief Justice wants to send a strong message. I also understand that the bar for removing a Hong Kong judge is high. But Chan should never have gotten a second chance. Once it was known that he had plagiarized two decisions that resulted in retrials, he should have been removed completely, not just reprimanded and reassigned.

To be clear, I am generally in support of giving plagiarists second chances in many cases. However, the seriousness of this plagiarism is matched only by the brazenness and laziness of it. Writing a decision is the very core of a judge’s job. If a judge cannot or will not do that properly, they should not be a judge, it’s that simple.

While I am happy that the Chief Justice announced that there will be changes made to judicial training, this is not a training issue. You don’t need a seminar to know why a judge should not copy their decisions from one of the parties.

This is the story of a bad judge who repeatedly took shortcuts to avoid doing what I would say is their most important task. That cannot be tolerated.

If the system makes it difficult or impossible to remove a judge who flouts ethical standards this severely, then the system needs to be changed. At that point, it’s not just an issue of one bad judge.

While I do hope other judges get a reminder to not plagiarize, I think the real lesson should be to create systems that hold judges accountable when they commit serious ethical violations, especially ones with practical consequences.

There will always be another Chan, but we can be ready for them next time if we start planning today.