Vallejos v Commissioner of Registration
Justice Johnson Lam Man-hon of the CFI had been expected to rule on the case on 29 September 2011. However, the Hong Kong Observatory raised tropical cyclone warning signal No. 8 due to the approach of Typhoon Nesat early that morning, meaning that government offices closed for the day. The next morning, the weather had returned to normal, and Lam announced his ruling that the relevant provision of the Immigration Ordinance was inconsistent with the Basic Law. Vallejos herself did not attend court that day, as she was at work.
Vallejos v Commissioner of Registration
Elsie Leung also called on the government to seek an interpretation as soon as possible; based her knowledge of the Court of Final Appeal's reading of the Basic Law in prior cases going back to "Director of Immigration v. Chong Fung Yuen" in 2001, she did not expect that the government would be able to win its case in that venue. She further accused both the CFI and the CFA of ignoring the legislative intent of the Basic Law's drafters. On this point, University of Hong Kong law professor Albert Chen, also a member of the Basic Law Committee, noted that Lam had very little flexibility in how he could rule on "Vallejos" precisely due to CFA precedents in the "Chong Fung Yuen" case and other early right of abode cases. He stated that the CFA's reluctance to take into account extrinsic materials in determining the intent of Article 24 stemmed largely from the fact that the extrinsic materials available to the CFA regarding the intent of Article 24 were published after the Basic Law itself. As a solution, he suggested that, if Beijing made public the minutes from the negotiations leading up to the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration, which was the basis for the drafting of the Basic Law, it might persuade the CFA to re-examine its interpretation of Article 24; the Joint Declaration, being a treaty, was subject to principles of international law, under which signatories to a treaty had the right to issue explanations of their positions.