Maria Candace Yuen Ka-ning JA, GBS (Chinese: 袁家寧; born 29 December 1953) was a Hong Kong judge.
[2][5] On 15 November 2002, her husband (Geoffrey Ma) was also appointed to the Court of Appeal.
[6] Subsequently, when Ma was appointed Chief Justice of the Court of Final Appeal in 2010, it was announced that he would not hear any appeals from cases in which Yuen has sat, nor would he deal with any administrative matter involving her.
However the promotion was rejected by pro-Beijing legislators, in an unprecedented breach of the norms of an independent legal system.
The legislators, who by protocol accept the recommendations of the commission, claimed that she might be influenced by her husband, whose defence of Hong Kong's judicial independence they considered unpatriotic.