Yet the Basic Law is stretchier than many think, says Franz Mayer of Bielefeld University.
But it will still be too much for the pace of change envisaged in the Basic Law.
One has to wonder if any one has bothered to read the Basic Law, Hong Kong's constitution.
The Basic Law says only that the chief is picked by an electoral college of 800 members.
It would instead ask the government in Beijing to overrule the court by reinterpreting the Basic Law.
According to the Basic Law, this will increase to 30 in elections to be held in September.
The Basic Law, the court had said, was clear: it guaranteed the right of residency to all offspring.
This was recognized by and enshrined in Article 158(2) of the Basic Law.
Furthermore, the Basic Law - itself a national law - plays an interfacing role between the two legal systems.
But this position should not be viewed in isolation from the broader constitutional order established by the Basic Law.
For example, everyone except the anarchists thinks that the basic law and order functions of the State are worthwhile.
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The Basic Law, China's mini-constitution for Hong Kong, decrees that the executive is accountable to the Legislative Council (Legco).
Never before has there been such cross-party interest in revising the basic law.
This, the Basic Law says, is certainly not going to happen before 2007 and it is vague about the mechanisms thereafter.
Conservatives have a horror that this will lead to pressure to get the Basic Law amended to speed up democracy.
The CFA says the right of abode provision in the Basic Law is clear enough and a further interpretation is unnecessary.
When the Basic Law was being drafted between 1985 and 1990, a solution was devised to cater to the different systems.
Hong Kong's Basic Law, the territory's post-colonial constitution drawn up by China, does not specify procedures for elections beyond these dates.
The ultimate sanction against the court would be to amend the Basic Law, which the local government does not rule out.
Instead, it is cutting nonrice subsidies and likely will soon revise its Agriculture Basic Law and allow corporations to till the land.
But, under the basic law's draft, the government in Baghdad would be responsible for defence as well as oil and foreign policy.
The Basic Law makes it clear that China's approval is needed for any change to the method of choosing a chief executive.
Its constitution, the Basic Law, states that Hong Kong has a legal jurisdiction that is clearly separate from the rest of China's.
The court hearing, which will decide whether Hong Kong's immigration law is consistent with its Basic Law, is expected to last three days.
Yet it is highly improbable that the enabling legislation could deviate from the Basic Law without being subject to challenge on constitutional grounds.
In 1989, Hungary's Parliament purged the constitution of its Stalinist elements to create a Western-style basic law for a return to multi-party democracy.
It will be the task of a joint commission to draft a basic law for Bangsamoro that sets out the structure of government.
It stopped admitting Hong Kong Chinese children born to Hong Kong residents, whom the Basic Law, Hong Kong's mini-constitution, stipulates may live there.
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