Noel Power

Sir Noel Power
鮑偉華爵士
President of the Court of Appeal of Brunei Darussalam
In office
2007–2009
Preceded bySir Derek Cons
Succeeded byJohn Mortimer
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Hong Kong
Acting
In office
1996–1997
Preceded bySir Ti-liang Yang
Succeeded byAndrew Li
(Chief Justice of the Court of Final Appeal of Hong Kong)
Personal details
Born(1929-12-04)4 December 1929
Brisbane, Australia
Died19 November 2009(2009-11-19) (aged 79)
Jerudong Park Medical Centre, Brunei-Muara, Brunei

Sir Noel Plunkett Power, GBS (Traditional Chinese: 鮑偉華爵士, 4 December 1929 – 19 November 2009) was a senior judge in Hong Kong and Brunei Darussalam. He had been a barrister-at-law in his home-country Australia when he joined the judiciary of Hong Kong in 1965 as a magistrate in the Lands Tribunal. Since then, he had been successively promoted as President of the Lands Tribunal, a puisne judge of the Supreme Court and Vice-President of the Court of Appeal. In 1996, he became acting Chief Justice of the Supreme Court when Sir Ti-liang Yang resigned and contested for the first ever election of the Chief Executive. After the transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong from Britain to People's Republic of China in 1997, he was appointed Vice-President of the Court of Appeal of the High Court. He retired from the High Court in 1999 but remained as a non-permanent judge of the Court of Final Appeal.

Power was honoured with a knighthood and a Gold Bauhinia Star in 1999 by the British monarch and the Government of Hong Kong respectively. He chaired an independent inquiry to probe into the opinion poll scandal of the University of Hong Kong in 2000. In 2005, he was one of the presiding judges of the Court of Final Appeal who heard the inheritance dispute between local tycoon Nina Wang and her old-aged father-in-law. In his later years, Power was a judge of the Court of Appeal of Brunei Darussalam and was appointed President in 2007. He died in office in 2009.