In Hong Kong, designated national security law judges are incumbent magistrates or judges who are further appointed by the Chief Executive to handle national security offence cases at various levels of the court system.
Paragraph 3 of Article 44 of the law requires national security offence cases to be handle by "designated judges".
Moreover, the Chief Executive is required by the law to not grant the designation to those who have "made any statement or behaved in any manner endangering national security".
[2] However when individual national security cases go through various legal proceedings in open court, the press and the public find out who the presiding designated judges are.
Yet, those judges who have been designated but have not yet presided in open court on any national security case are not known to the public.