Introduction

This article reviews the history and application of the public policy defence to enforcement of Convention awards in leading Hong Kong cases and offers some general observations upon the judicial approach to the public policy doctrine when enforcement is resisted on this basis in Hong Kong. It is a revised and updated distillation of two papers originally presented on 12 December 2008 at the Beijing Conference on the 50th Anniversary of the New York Convention, when the author was judge in charge of the Commercial List of the High Court of Hong Kong.