Former President Ma Ying-jeou of the Republic of China (Taiwan) (LLM ‘76) told a standing-room-only crowd in Lipton Hall on October 16, 2023, that the United States should encourage the current government in Taiwan to hold a dialogue with the People’s Republic of China.
WSJ: In China, a #MeToo Case Gets Its Day in Court
On December 2, 2020, the Wall Street Journal published a story about a court hearing in a sexual harassment case in Beijing. This article included a quote from Affiliated Scholar Aaron Halegua. Halegua began researching this sexual harassment and discrimination as part of a USALI project, which happened to take place just after the #MeToo movement erupted in the US.
Event Recording: World War II Reparations in Contemporary East Asia
Tim Webster, a professor of law, has dedicated many years to exploring the law, sociology, and politics of East Asia's World War II reparations movements -- which are still ongoing 75 years after the war’s end. Why are the last surviving war victims in Asia and their families still pursuing claims for reparations? Professor Webster will give an overview of the major legal cases, settlement agreements, international treaties, efforts by civil society organizations, and political negotiations to allocate liability for World War II.
Event Recording: Celebrating Jerry Cohen & Six Decades of U.S.-Asia Cooperation in Law
The U.S.-Asia Law Institute celebrated its founder and director emeritus, Professor Jerome A. Cohen, and his unique contributions to U.S.-Asia mutual understanding and cooperation in the field of law. 2020 marked Jerry Cohen’s 90th birthday and his official retirement from teaching at NYU – although not his retirement from writing, speaking, advocacy, and devotion to the U.S.-Asia Law Institute.
Newsweek: Don't Rush to Fully Normalize Relations With Taiwan
From Faculty Director Emeritus Jerome A. Cohen: "Trump, by contrast, is playing the China card to "decouple" the U.S. from the PRC. And Xi Jinping's government, while expressing concern about this disturbing trend, refuses, unlike Deng Xiaoping's government of the 1970s, to brook any compromise...Yet none of these disputes, even the South China Sea, has as much explosive potential as contemplated changes in America's relations with Taiwan."
The China Collection: Taiwan and the World Health Assembly: The Politics of Invitation
CFR Publication: Why Does the WHO Exclude Taiwan?
Event Recap: Exonerated! From Central Park to East Asia
Wrongful convictions occur in every jurisdiction, and legal professionals around the world should collaborate to redress and prevent them. That was the message of ‘Exonerated! From Central Park to East Asia,’ a speaker event held at the law school on Tuesday, October 8, 2019 by the U.S.-Asia Law Institute (USALI) and co-sponsored by the Center on the Administration of Criminal Law and Asia Law Society.
Transitional Justice in Taiwan: Changes and Challenges
Taiwan’s experience with transitional justice over the past three decades suggests that dealing with historical injustice is a dynamic and fluid process that is fundamentally shaped and constrained by the balance of power and socio-political reality in a particular transitional society. This Article provides a contextualized legal-political analysis of the evolution of Taiwan’s transitional justice regime, with special attention to its limits and challenges.
Judicial Activism in Taiwan
USALI’s guest speakers from East Asia often inspire reflection on our own legal and judicial debates from new angles. At a special seminar at USALI on November 1, Chief Justice Tzong-Li Hsu and Justice Jau-Yuan Hwang of Taiwan’s Constitutional Court made a case for judicial activism, which has become a mostly pejorative term in the United States. Chief Justice Hsu argued that Taiwan’s Constitutional Court should “serve as mediator for opposing political forces in the process of transition.”
China's Challenge to the International Human Rights Regime
Human rights in China is an important research field that the USALI is actively engaged in. Dr. Yu-Jie Chen, our affiliate scholar and a Global Academic Fellow at Hong Kong University Faculty of Law, has just published an article on “China’s Challenge to the International Human Rights Regime” (NYU Journal of International Law and Politics, vol. 51, no. 4, 2019).
Human Rights in the Chinese Administration of Justice
This paper, published by USALI Affiliated Scholar Yu-Jie Chen, is part of the annual report published by Taiwan’s Foundation for Democracy on human rights in China. It gives an overview of the recent trends, particularly in 2018, regarding human rights issues in the contexts of the Chinese police law enforcement, the National Supervisory Commission, the court and lawyers.
Harvard Book Event: Taiwan and International Human Rights
From Professor Jerome A. Cohen’s Blog:
I'm delighted to announce the publication of a new edited volume, Taiwan and International Human Rights: A Story of Transformation. I admire the hard work of my co-editors and dear friends, Professors Bill Alford of Harvard and LO Chang-fa, former Taiwan Constitutional Court Justice and National Taiwan University Law Dean, that made this book possible.
The Taiwan Relations Act: Charting a Stable Course for the U.S. & Asia
The Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) is a model of legal ingenuity spurred by political necessity. Jimmy Carter inherited Richard Nixon’s challenge, which was to establish diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Nixon took the first step in February 1972 with his famous trip to Beijing, where he, Henry Kissinger, and China’s leaders concluded the Shanghai Communiqué. The Communiqué gave ambiguous assurance to China about Taiwan.