Hong Kong District Court
| District Court | |
|---|---|
| 香港特別行政區地區法院 | |
Interactive map of District Court | |
| 22°16′48.02″N 114°10′20.48″E / 22.2800056°N 114.1723556°E | |
| Established | 18 February 1953 |
| Jurisdiction | Hong Kong |
| Location | 12 Harbour Road, Wan Chai, Victoria, Hong Kong Island Hong Kong |
| Coordinates | 22°16′48.02″N 114°10′20.48″E / 22.2800056°N 114.1723556°E |
| Authorised by | Hong Kong Basic Law |
| Appeals to | Court of Appeal |
| Website | judiciary.hk |
| Chief District Judge | |
| Currently | Justin Ko |
| Hong Kong District Court | |||||||||||||
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| Traditional Chinese | 區域法院 | ||||||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 区域法院 | ||||||||||||
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| Pre-handover name | |||||||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 地方法院 | ||||||||||||
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| This article is part of the series: Courts of Hong Kong |
| Law of Hong Kong |
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The District Court (in case citations, HKDC) is the intermediate court in Hong Kong, having limited criminal and civil jurisdictions.
The hierarchy of the Hong Kong judiciary from high to low is: the Court of Final Appeal, the High Court (consisting of the upper Court of Appeal and the lower Court of First Instance), the District Court, and magistrates' courts.
The District Court was first established in 1953 with the enactment of the District Court Ordinance, and is roughly equivalent to the County Court of England and Wales in terms of its civil jurisdiction. From 1991 to 2020, the court sat exclusively in the Wanchai Law Courts, Wanchai Tower, 12 Harbour Road, until the increase in protest-related cases with large numbers of defendants necessitated some trials to be conducted in the West Kowloon Law Courts Building, the Eastern Law Courts Building, and the Tsuen Wan Law Courts Building instead.
Until March 1991, there were six district courts, namely Victoria, Kowloon, Fanling, Tsuen Wan, Tuen Mun and Sha Tin, before being amalgamated into the current single District Court in March 1991.