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