Comments

With these premises, I would just like to pinpoint one or two basic ideas that Professor Canotilho brought to this auditorium. The first is the completely new perspective regarding the issues of Macau’s autonomy, and, as in many other situations when we address Macau, we can also similarly extend such observations to the sister Hong Kong SAR. This paper reminds me of another paper that Canotilho wrote more than a dozen of years ago, I believe, on the Joint Declaration and the Amparo writ, As palavras e os homens – reflexões sobre a Declaração Conjunta Luso- Chinesa e a institucionalização do recurso de amparo de direitos e liberdades na ordem jurídica de Macau, which was published several times in both Macau and Portugal. That paper was a landmark for the study of the Joint Declaration and of the Amparo institution; it opened brand new avenues of thought, of research, and of tentative solutions to complex juridical and political issues. I believe that a new avenue of research, and of legal reasoning, is also opened by the paper that Professor Canotilho rendered in this Seminar regarding the autonomy of the SARs.