In January 2017, one of the editors of this book, Jerome A. Cohen, delivered a
public speech at National Taiwan University College of Law after he had served as
a member of the international group of experts invited by the government of Taiwan
to review its implementation of international human rights covenants. In his speech,
he mentioned that based on his personal experience and his participation in the
review, Taiwan has much to share with people in other parts of the world about its
experiences in transforming itself from historically having had an authoritarian legal
and political structure into what is now a vibrantly democratic society.
Spurred by this, we decided to put together a book to tell the story of Taiwan’s
performance in various fields of human rights from various perspectives. We are
pleased that local and international scholars and other experts, many with a long
history of writing about human rights, readily accepted our invitation to participate
in this volume. They were enthusiastic about the opportunity to elaborate from a
theoretical and/or practical vantage point areas of human rights protection with
which they are familiar. In addition to the introductory chapter coauthored by the
editors of this book, we have collected 37 chapters from authors representing a
broad range of perspectives and topics, with some authors finding many developments
to laud, while others instead emphasize the need for improvement.