PROFESSOR RAYMOND WACKS BA, LLB, LLM, LLD, MLitt, PhD is Emeritus Professor of Law and Legal Theory, University of Hong Kong where he taught from 1984 to 2001, and was Head of the Department of Law from 1986 to 1993. In 1997 a higher doctorate in law (LLD) was conferred on him by the University of London for his publications on privacy and legal theory. 

 

Educated at the University of the Witwatersrand, the London School of Economics, and University College, Oxford, he has published more than twenty books and numerous articles on legal philosophy, the protection of privacy on which he is a leading international authority, and several other legal issues.

 

After teaching law in Oxford from 1974 to 1981, he was appointed Professor of Public Law at the University of Natal, Durban where he taught until 1984.

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His books have been translated into a number of languages including Greek, Italian, Turkish, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Indonesian, and Georgian).

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His principal works on the legal protection of privacy are: 

 

    The Protection of Privacy, Modern Legal Studies (London: Sweet &     Maxwell, 1980)

 

  Personal Information: Privacy and the Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989 and 1993)

 

    Privacy (2 vols) The International Library of Essays in Law and Legal Theory (London: Dartmouth; New York: New York University Press, 1993). Vol I: The Concept of Privacy. Vol II: Privacy and the Law.

 

    Privacy and Press Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). 

    Hong Kong Data Privacy Law: Territorial Regulation in a Borderless World (co-author, M Berthold) (Hong Kong: Thomson, Sweet & Maxwell, 2003).

 

   Law, Morality, and the Private Domain (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2000).

 

    Privacy: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); second edition, 2015.

 

   Privacy and Media Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
 

Professor Wacks has also published widely in the field of legal philosophy. The fifth edition of Understanding Jurisprudence: An Introduction to Legal Theory will be published by Oxford University Press in October 2017.

 

In 2006, Oxford University Press published his Philosophy of Law: A Very Short Introduction.

 

In 2008 his second book in this series, Law: A Very Short Introduction appeared. A second edition appeared in 2015. 

 

In addition to publishing articles and books on these subjects, he has edited a number of collections of essays on various aspects of Hong Kong law, including the following - all published by Oxford University Press:

 

• Civil Liberties in Hong Kong

• The Future of the Law in Hong Kong

• The Law in Hong Kong 1969-1989

• Human Rights in Hong Kong

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The following are published by Hong Kong University Press:

 

• Hong Kong, China, and 1997: Essays in Legal Theory

• The New Legal Order in Hong Kong 

• Law, Morality, and the Private Domain

 

He was for several years editor of the Hong Kong Law Journal and presented the RTHK television and radio programme, The Week in Politics.

 

At the end of 2001 he took early retirement and escaped to the Tuscan hills with his wife, Penelope, and a variety of animals. 

 

Raymond Wacks' first novel, White Lies (set in the Sixties in South Africa) was published in November 2010.