East Asia Program Lecture Series presents "The Rule of Law in Political Conflicts: How Taiwanese Courts Respond to Disobedience in Political Polarization."

In a severely polarized polity, political actors are sometimes driven to take extra-legal actions to secure their political goals. Such actions, often self-proclaimed as “civil disobedience”, pose serious challenge to the rule of law. How should the courts respond? What does the rule of law mean in such circumstances? Taiwan’s experience in the past two decades offer precious lessons.

Taiwan experienced a surge of social and civic movements since 2008, which culminated in the Sunflower Movement in 2014. It resulted in a series of judicial decisions showcasing the courts’ dynamic interactions with the civil society. Based upon comprehensive study of judicial decisions in Taiwan for over a decade, Hsu identifies evolving patterns of judicial response to disobedience. He argues that the rule of law plays an important role in maintaining fair political competition and facilitating political reconciliation.

Jimmy Chia-Shin Hsu is Research Professor at the Institute of Law, Academia Sinica, Taiwan. He received LL.B. from National Taiwan University, LL.M. and J.S.D. from the University of Chicago Law School. He was Harvard Yenching Scholar 2016-2017. His research includes legal philosophy, comparative constitutional law, civil disobedience, and transitional justice. He has published widely in international journals and books. He is the President of IVR (International Association for the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy) Taiwan Section. He recently published edited volumes such as Human Dignity in Asia: Dialogue between Law and Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2022) and The Ethics of Historical Memory: From Transitional Justice to Overcoming the Past (National Taiwan University Press, 2024, in Chinese). He is currently working on comparative judicial responses to civil disobedience, theories of human dignity in East Asian contexts, and post-transition justice and ethics of historical memory.

About the East Asia Program

As Cornell’s hub for research, teaching, and engagement with East Asia, the East Asia Program (EAP) is a forum for the interdisciplinary study of historical and contemporary East Asia. Part of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, the program draws its membership of over 45 core faculty and numerous affiliated faculty, graduate, and undergraduate students from across Cornell's colleges and schools.