PRESS RELEASES | JUL 17, 2025
In Loving Memory of Professor Peter Rhodes (1948-2025)
It is with great sadness that we share with you the news that Professor Peter Rhodes, our beloved former colleague and Dean, has passed away.
Peter was born in 1948 at St Teresa’s Hospital, Kowloon. He grew up and lived in Hong Kong until age 11, when he went to school in New Zealand. He graduated in law at the University of Auckland, and then pursued LLM study in Canada, where he started his career as a legal academic. He joined the teaching staff of the Law School at the University of Hong Kong in 1979. He did a second LLM at Harvard in 1982-83, where he studied international business law, a subject which he taught HKU after his return to Hong Kong, first at the undergraduate level and then in the new LLM programme established in 1986.
Peter succeeded Professor Dafydd Evans as the second Dean of HKU’s Faculty of Law after the law school acquired Faculty status in 1984. He was elected Dean by Faculty colleagues twice, and served two 3-year terms in 1987-1993.
Under Peter’s Deanship, the Faculty moved from strength to strength. Peter diversified the Faculty’s recruitment of academic staff to include more common law jurisdictions, increased the proportion of colleagues from Hong Kong itself, and for the first time in the Faculty’s history appointed a legal academic with Mainland background. Peter also initiated a comprehensive review of the LLB programme and introduced a significantly reformed curriculum. He actively promoted the development of the newly established LLM programme. He actively engaged in fundraising for the Faculty and established numerous scholarships, prizes and awards for students.
Peter steered the Faculty’s development during a period of historical transition in Hong Kong, as the Basic Law of the HKSAR was enacted in 1990 and the Hong Kong of Bill of Rights was introduced in 1991. He promoted the teaching of Chinese law and of the ‘Use of Chinese in Law’ course in the Faculty. He established in the Faculty the Sir Y.K. Pao Chair of Public Law and recruited Professor Yash Ghai to this position.
Peter left our Faculty and in the next nine years took up several positions of ‘in-house’ professional legal education in law firms in New Zealand and Hong Kong. In 2006, he returned to university teaching, this time at the newly established law school at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and taught several more generations of Hong Kong law students until his retirement this year.
Peter devoted almost his entire life to legal education in Hong Kong. One of his former students, now a Senior Counsel, wrote: ‘Peter was a most exemplary teacher and one who was respected by almost all my classmates. Through his lecturing we had gained much insight into how the common law works and this in turn helped to ground us in our future practice with a keen awareness of the nuances of case law that we have to apply in our day-to-day work in and outside court. I feel particularly sad about his passing but am certain that the students he touched still remember the contributions he has made in each of our professional lives.’
One of Peter’s former colleagues describes him as ‘an extremely kind, gentle, and generous person’. Another former colleague remembers him ‘with respect and affection as being the epitome of gentle strength, quiet authority and great ability’. Emeritus Professor Raymond Wacks, who served as Head of the Department of Law during Peter’s Deanship, wrote: ‘Among Peter’s numerous virtues was his integrity, modesty, and unfailing loyalty to the Faculty of which he served as Dean with great distinction. He possessed exceptionally clear ideas about the direction and purpose of both departments, and, as Head of the Department of Law throughout his Deanship, I was cajoled into living up to his exacting standards and expectations. … I shall remember him as a loyal friend, a fine leader, a dedicated teacher, and a man of absolute probity and kindness.’
Peter was greatly respected, admired, trusted and loved by his former colleagues, students and friends. He will be dearly missed. We share below the reminiscences of a few of them. We also share with you here Peter’s closing remarks when he was interviewed for the Faculty’s 50th anniversary book project in 2018: ‘My sense is that no matter what your political persuasion is, Hong Kong people believe in the Rule of Law and will stand up for it.’
Faculty of Law, The University of Hong Kong
17 July 2025
Reminiscences
- Professor Richard Glofcheski
- Emeritus Professor Raymond Wacks
- Mr Johnny Mok S.C.
- Hon Carmen Kan, JP
- Professor Johannes Chan SC (Hon)