Description

Courts and civil society are indispensable elements for the development of democratic constitutionalism, particularly against the backdrop of recent global democratic backsliding. In a constitutional democracy, courts are to place checks and balances with the exercise of government powers and to ensure the protection of fundamental rights and freedoms. Similarly, civil society also stays alert to the exercise of government powers, placing strong demands for the full realization of people’s rights and freedoms. By analysing the recent development in Taiwan’s same-sex marriage equality, this presentation is aimed at elucidating ways that courts – specifically the constitutional court – and civil society may have interacted in specific contexts and how their performances may have impacted constitutional governance.

About The Speaker

Professor Wen-Chen Chang is jointly appointed as Dean and Professor of National Chiao Tung University School of Law and as Professor of National Taiwan University College of Law. She is a leading scholar of constitutional law in Taiwan and has published major scholarly works on comparative constitutional laws including Asian Courts in Context, with Jiunn-rong Yeh (Cambridge University Press, 2015) and Constitutionalism in Asia: Cases and Materials, with Kevin YL Tan, Li-ann Thio & Jiunn-rong Yeh (Hart Publishing, 2014). Her teaching and research interests lie in comparative constitutional law, international human rights, administrative laws, and law and society. She serves in editorial boards for leading academic journals including International Journal of Constitutional Law and Cambridge Journal of Global Constitutionalism: Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law.