The 29 Principles is a UK-based non-profit organisation that supports human rights lawyers working under authoritarian regimes. We partner with legal associations and lawyers from across the world to empower human rights lawyers to overcome the issues they face from the regime.
Our team is largely made up of Hongkongers living in quasi-exile, who have experienced first hand the impact of a shrinking rule of law in Hong Kong and mainland China, and have decades of experience working for human rights in the region.
OUR PATRON
BARONESS KENNEDY OF THE SHAWS
Baroness Helena Kennedy KC is one of Britain's most distinguished lawyers. She has spent her professional life giving voice to those who have least power within the system, championing civil liberties and promoting human rights. She has conducted many prominent cases of terrorism, official secrets and homicide. She is the founding force behind the establishment of the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights at the University of Oxford. In 1997, she was elevated to the House of Lords where she is a Labour peer. She has published a number of books including two on how the justice system is failing women, and has written and broadcasted on many issues over the years. Currently, she has taken on the role of Director to the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute. She directs the Institute’s work upholding the rule of law and human rights globally.
JEROME A. COHEN
Jerome A. Cohen is a Professor at NYU School of Law since 1990 and Faculty Director of its U.S.-Asia Law Institute, is a leading American expert on East Asian law, Chinese law and government. A pioneer in the field, Cohen began studying and teaching about China’s legal system in the early 1960s, and from 1964 to 1979 introduced the teaching of Asian law into the curriculum of Harvard Law School, where he served as Jeremiah Smith Professor, Associate Dean and Director of East Asian Legal Studies. In addition to his responsibilities at NYU, Cohen served for several years as C.V. Starr Senior Fellow and Director of Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he currently is an Adjunct Senior Fellow.
Cohen is an advocate of human rights in China, and has taken active roles in securing the release of Chinese American historian Song Yongyi and blind human rights lawyer Chen Guangcheng from under Chinese custody. His former students include Taiwanese president Ma Ying-jeou, and Annette Lu, former Taiwanese vice president under Chen Shui-bian.
He retired from the partnership of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP at the end of 2000 after twenty years of law practice focused on China. In his law practice, Cohen represented many companies and individuals in contract negotiations as well as in dispute resolution in China.
MARTIN S. FLAHERTY
Martin Flaherty is a legal scholar and international human rights activist. Flaherty is Leitner Family Professor of Law and Founding Co-Director of Leitner Center for International Law and Justice at Fordham Law School. He is also a Visiting Professor at Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, where he was Fellow in the Program in Law and Public Affairs, a Visiting Professor at both Columbia Law School and New School in New York, and an Adjunct Professor at Barnard College. Flaherty has taught at China University of Political Science and Law and the National Judges College in Beijing, and co-founded Rule of Law in Asia Program at Leitner Center as well as Committee to Support Chinese Lawyers, an independent NGO on which he serves as Vice Chair. He has also taught at Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul, Queen’s University Belfast, St. John’s School of Law, and New York Law School, among others. Previously he served as a law clerk for Justice Byron R. White of the U.S. Supreme Court and Chief Judge John Gibbons of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
For the Leitner Center, Human Rights First, and New York City Bar Association, he has led or participated in human rights missions to Northern Ireland, Turkey, Hong Kong, Mexico, Malaysia, Kenya, Romania and China. He is a former the Chair of the Council on International Affairs of New York City Bar Association and of Committee on International Human Rights. He is also a member of Council on Foreign Relations. Flaherty's publications focus upon constitutional law and history, foreign affairs, and international human rights and appear in multiple prominent law journals.
OUR HONORARY ADVISOR
STUART RUSSELL
Stuart Russell is co-chair of the Monitoring Committee on Attacks on Lawyers of the International Association of People's Lawyers (IAPL) who has closely monitored attacks on lawyers around the world for almost a decade, particularly in China and Hong Kong. Prior to retirement he was a human rights lawyer in Canada, as well as a senior lecturer in the School of Law at Macquarie University in Sydney and an administrative judge for refugee appeals in Australia.
OUR BOARD MEMBER
PATRICK POON
Patrick Poon is a Visiting Researcher of the University of Tokyo and previously a Visiting Researcher at the Institute for Comparative Law of Meiji University in Tokyo, Japan. He is a PhD candidate at the University of Lyon, France. In his years in Hong Kong, Patrick was a court reporter at the South China Morning Post, an English website editor of China Labour Bulletin, executive secretary and board member of China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group, executive secretary and board member of Independent Chinese PEN Center, and a China researcher of Amnesty International.