Taiwan’s status as a state is often challenged not because it fails to meet the criteria for statehood, but because of its ambiguous legal relationship with the People’s Republic of China (PRC). We continue our “Taiwan Legal” speaker series by asking how Taiwan, functioning as the Republic of China (ROC), defines its relationship with the PRC in legal terms. Yu-Jie Chen, an assistant research professor at the Institutum Iurisprudentiae of Academia Sinica, will explain what the ROC Constitution says and how Taiwan engages with and distinguishes itself from the PRC.

We continue our “Taiwan Legal” speaker series by examining the United Nations’ position on the legal status of Taiwan. In 1971, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 2758 declaring that the “representatives of the Government of the People’s Republic of China are the only lawful representatives of China to the United Nations,” displacing the Republic of China, which had held the “China” seat since the UN was founded. Jacques deLisle, a professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania, will explain the background and legal effect of the resolution, how the PRC reads--and misreads-- it and why this 54-year-old resolution matters today.   

Donald Trump’s return to the White House has brought a massive acceleration of the trade war with China that he began during his first term and that President Biden deepened. So far, Trump’s focus has been on tariffs, not exclusive to China. Biden introduced a complex array of US export, import, investment, and sanctions regimes more narrowly targeting China, each with distinct but overlapping rules. The resulting trade regime is difficult for American companies to follow and also increasingly relies upon cooperation and enforcement by other countries. Transshipment restrictions have become an onerous element of both US and Chinese measures. Particularly affected are East Asian countries that are usually regarded as US partners but rely on trade with both superpowers. Christina Davis, a professor of Japanese politics at Harvard University and director of the Program on U.S.-Japan Relations, and Pasha Hsieh, professor of law at Singapore Management University, will discuss the economic and political impact that US-Chinese rivalry is having on these countries, how much agency they have to comply or abstain from the superpower struggle, the impact on regional trade patterns, and whether these smaller countries may help lead the way back to a more unified rules-based trade order.

The Constitutional Courts of South Korea and Taiwan have been thrust into the spotlight in recent weeks as they are asked to arbitrate bitter power struggles between the elected branches – power struggles in which the justices themselves have been targeted. Two eminent constitutional scholars – Chaihark Hahm of Yonsei Law School and Jiunn-rong Yeh of National Taiwan University – will explain the background to the current crises and reflect on the role of courts in protecting democracy at times of deep partisan divisions.

The U.S.-Asia Law Institute hosts Ma Ying-jeou (LLM ‘76) in conversation with USALI founder and Director Emeritus Jerry Cohen. He will talk about the complicated relationships among Taiwan, the People’s Republic of China and the United States.

Following China’s recent barrage of incursions into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone, experts and officials on both sides of the Pacific are analyzing the risk of military conflict and options for keeping peace in the Taiwan Strait at a time of significant pressure on US-China.

Please join us for a discussion of recent developments in "Innocence" work in Asia and the United States. Experts from China, Japan, Taiwan and the U.S. will discuss significant trends in exonerating the innocent with special panels focusing on the exclusion of junk science from evidence and the positive and negative roles played by prosecutors, that is, sometimes supporting exonerations and contributing to wrongful convictions.