Attracting the city’s top legal minds to become judges has been hard because they can earn more in the private sector, while the process for appointing new judges is long and contentious. Mrs. Lam could bypass the process with her emergency powers and name a lot of young, pro-Beijing judges, but that would undermine Hong Kong’s international reputation for judicial independence.

So far, the government is unwilling to go to the extreme of calling for intervention by Beijing.

An obscure provision under the Basic Law, Article 18, allows the mainland to extend its stringent national security laws to Hong Kong if the Standing Committee of China’s rubber-stamp legislature “decides that the region is in a state of emergency.” Mrs. Lam seemed to fend off this possibility when she emphasized on Friday that Hong Kong wasn’t in such a dire position.

Still, Lau Siu-kai, a former top city official who is a leading adviser to Beijing on Hong Kong policy, said that unrest had reached the point where Article 18 might become an option at some point.

Mr. Lau cautioned, however, that he wasn’t calling for it. Beijing, he said, did not want to intervene and become responsible for fixing Hong Kong’s problems.

“That is the last thing Beijing wants to do,” Mr. Lau said. “Right now, Beijing is ready for a long, drawn-out war, because what is happening in Hong Kong is hurting Hong Kong more than the mainland.”