Recorded on November 11, 2020.
COVID and Constitutions: COVID’s Challenge to Taiwan and Vietnam
Event Description:
This is the final talk in our three-part series, COVID and Constitutions, which explores how the current pandemic challenges national and international legal orderings. This week, Professors Chuan-feng Wu, Wen-Tsong Chiou, and Trang Nguyen talk about why Taiwan and Vietnam have succeeded in containing the virus more successfully than most other nations, at least so far. Are their achievements sui generis, or are there lessons for other governments in the ways their constitutional and legal systems allocate authority in a public health crisis? Their governments could hardly be more different: Taiwan is a multi-party democracy while Vietnam is a single-party authoritarian regime that ruthlessly suppresses dissent. Yet in the face of COVID, Taiwan enforced mandatory quarantine measures with cell phone tracking and rationed tracked its citizens’ purchase of masks, while Vietnam’s often-secretive leadership experimented with new transparency.
Related publications by the speakers:
Vietnam’s Astonishing Success at Curbing COVID-19 Outbreaks by Trang (Mae) Nguyen
Reopening Vietnam: How the country’s improving governance helped it weather the COVID-19 pandemic by Trang (Mae) Nguyen
Reimagining the Administrative State in Times of Global Health Crisis: An Anatomy of Taiwan’s Regulatory Actions in Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic by Chuan-Feng Wu
About the Speakers:
Chuan-feng Wu is an associate research professor at the Institutum Iurisprudentiae of the Academia Sinica in Taiwan, and co-director of the institute’s Information Law Center. His research focuses on health care law, international human rights, and public health ethics. He holds a J.S.D. from the University of California at Berkeley School of Law, an L.L.M. from Harvard Law School, an M.S. in health and welfare policy from National Yang-Ming University in Taipei, and undergraduate degrees in law and public health from National Taiwan University.
Wen-Tsong Chiou is a research professor at the Institutum Iurisprudentiae of the Academia Sinica in Taiwan, and co-director of the institute’s Information Law Center. His research focuses on information law, constitutional privacy, science & law, STS & law, and biomedical and public health ethics. He holds a S.J.D., University of Virginia (2004), two L.L.M.s from the University of Pennsylvania and National Taiwan University, and an LL.B from National Taiwan University.
Trang (Mae) Nguyen is an assistant professor at Temple University Beasley School of Law. Before that, she was the John N. Hazard Fellow at the U.S.-Asia Law Institute at NYU and a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley’s Center for the Study of Law and Society. Her research uses mixed empirical methods to study transnational business governance, global supply chains, and authoritarian legality, with a focus on Asia. Before entering academia, Professor Nguyen practiced corporate law in the Silicon Valley office of Davis Polk & Wardwell, LLP and served on the policy team of the California Office of the Attorney General.