 Okay, so welcome everyone to today's SOI Centre of Taiwan Studies online book launch. Today we're doing the book launch of Democracy and Rule of Law in China's Shadow, a book that's edited by Ryan Christopher Jones. We're really delighted to welcome Brian back. He was last here in December of 2017. I was just chatting to my students beforehand and noticed I've still got the poster of the December 2017 book talk, which I think, Brian, you did on your own, didn't you, I think? Yes, that's right. But this time we're even more lucky. We're actually joined by two of the chapter authors, and that was both based in Taiwan. That was part of the reason why we decided to do today's session as an online launch. Brian is now a lecturer in law at the University of Sheffield. Brian's travelled quite a bit in his academic career. He's had a postdoc in academia Seneca, and in his last talk in 2017, he was based in Dundee. So now he's come halfway down towards London. But as I mentioned earlier, we have two chapter authors as well joining us. Firstly, we have Jimmy Xu, who has positions in both academia Seneca and National Yangming Jiao Tong University. Jimmy is going to speak in at SOAS for the first time, so we're really delighted to hear about Jimmy's research, or a topic that I think is really relevant to our students, because we have so much interest in Taiwanese social movements. But I don't think we've had enough legal angles on this. That's one of the reasons why I'm really delighted that Brian's brought you all together. And then our third speaker is Professor Guan Xiaowei from the College of Law National Taipei University. Like Brian Xiaowei is someone who we're familiar with, because she was here even more recently. She spoke at our summer school back in 2020, when she spoke about the really fascinating topic about the feminist movement and the decriminalisation of adultery. A really topical issue that we're just seeing that constitutional ruling back earlier in 2020. And like many of our speakers at SOAS, Professor Guan is someone who combines both academic work on legal issues related to gender, but also someone who's quite heavily involved in activism in the promotion of gender equality in Taiwan. And I think this is one of the reasons why our students really enjoy hearing people speak at SOAS, who combine both the academic and activist angles on Taiwanese politics and society. So welcome all three of you. And let me then first hand over to Brian to talk a little bit about the overall project and how it came to fruition. Something that is often, as someone who's edited books, I know how complex and how frustrating that can be. So thanks again everyone and welcome to SOAS. Thanks so much. And I really appreciate the invitation, David. And thanks also to the other speakers for being here, for Xiaowei and Jimmy. It's really nice to see you guys, even if it's only virtually. I'm really pleased to be back at SOAS at the centre of Taiwan Studies. And I think you guys do so much down there. And it's really nice to be included in the program. So as Daphid said, rather than delving into my chapter, which is on court criticism and the rule of law, I'm just going to provide some kind of general comments and reflections on the book. And let me start off by saying, I think publication of the book to me feels a little bit bittersweet. So I'm really proud of the book that we put out. And I think in a large sense, it's kind of a follow up of our previous collection, so which was called Law and Politics of the Taiwan Sunflower and Hong Kong Umbrella Movements. So we have, we cover some of these developments and some of the kind of things related to what happened in those movements. But we definitely go beyond them as well in this text. I think we have some really insightful chapters from a wide variety of authors. And I think we have both well-established and early career authors and a lot of authors from that middle range as well. We have authors from the UK, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore and Australia. So I think it's truly a collaborative project. And it was great to work with these authors. And the process was definitely so much easier because of them. So, thank you, Xiaowei and Jimmy for making things so much easier. I think the book also has some brave chapters that I think say kind of new and fresh things and maybe some things that people are a little bit kind of hesitant to say as well. So I'm really proud of that also. Also, the book is definitely has a personal dimension to it also. So my wife is Taiwanese and I have two children that are Taiwanese, not to mention many friends and family in Taiwan and Hong Kong and other places in Asia as well. So many of the issues that we talk in the book definitely hit home and they impact people that I know and love. So it's definitely a highly personal project as well. And I think it's also evident that these issues stretch beyond Asia and definitely beyond China's shadow. And I think that's readily apparent from some of the chapters in the book as well. So those are a few things that I'm really happy and proud that we did in the book. But the reason it's kind of bittersweet is because let me also say that the optimism that I had I think when we started the project has kind of dwindled a little bit. So we used to talk about kind of interesting legal and political changes in Taiwan. From just a few years back, same sex marriage and kind of some of these new political developments. And now we hear increasingly less about these interesting legal and political developments and more about kind of the fractious relationship between Taiwan and China. And of course, China's desire to kind of swallow or unify Taiwan as well. Well, we also heard Aira Lee saw kind of this, you know, resurgence of interest in democracy in Hong Kong. And I think you probably saw that from about 2014 to 2019, right? Which was a really intense period in Hong Kong. Really kind of a lot of interest in the basic law, you know, what the basic law said about democracy, how democracy was going to be delivered. There was a lot of discussion about, you know, what was genuine democracy and how was genuine democracy going to be delivered. And, you know, some of that I think is definitely dwindled, right? You know, it was extremely difficult to finish up the book when so much change was happening in Hong Kong and on the Hong Kong side, especially with the new national security law and the clampdown on free speech in Hong Kong. So I think it was really difficult to say, you know, when we just had to stop and say, you know, yes, there are still developments going on, but we just have to stop and get this book out and published. So it was very difficult to know kind of when to do that. And I think, you know, let's not forget that, you know, a lot of the things that we're discussing here, I think, you know, are quite serious. You know, we have one author in the collection, Benny Tai, that's lost his job and is currently imprisoned. And for what? Right? For advocating democracy, essentially. Just a couple of days ago as well, we saw that Tony Chung became the youngest person to be jailed under Hong Kong's national security law at 20 years old. He was sentenced to two years and seven months for secession. And the district judge even said, even though the defendant did not have concrete plans to split the country, his goal was very much clear. The charge of secession does not require actual plans. So you can see how seriously Hong Kong is treating speech at the moment and especially things like, you know, acknowledging independence or formally acknowledging that you want independence for Hong Kong. It's almost akin to kind of the way that Western countries would treat something like terrorism. But also, you know, not for this event, but you know, for other events, I've approached authors of this within this collection to talk about their chapters and, you know, they've been unwilling to do so and they're afraid to do so. So I think that also shows kind of where we are in this discussion in relation to kind of speech and how it's developing in East Asia. So the things that we're writing about, the things that we're reading about can sometimes seem, you know, really abstract. But there are people who are living these developments and have to deal with these developments on a daily basis. And I think that should not be forgotten as well. So let me end with kind of two observations. The first is that, for me at least, Taiwan, and you could even say, you know, Hong Kong from kind of 24 to 2019, to me as a reminder that, you know, not everything has to be about economics, right? You know, I think sometimes we lose sight of this and I think especially when it comes to constitutional issues. Of course, economic considerations are relevant. You know, there's no doubt about that. But governmental arrangements, you know, how things are structured, how democracy operates in a particular state can be just as important, if not more so than economic benefits, right? And this, of course, began with that kind of scupper trade pact in 2014 in Taiwan. They would definitely have benefited Taiwan, you know, economically. So sometimes, you know, I think this shows that countries do have to make difficult decisions about things. They could hurt their GDP, right? But in the long run, could maybe be more valuable. And I think that's a valuable lesson, not just in Asia or in, you know, China's shadow, but I think even beyond as well, right? You know, I think that kind of differentiates Taiwan from some of its neighbors, right, who may be really good at kind of the economic bit, right? And really good at, you know, keeping citizens happy and content with all the stuff, you know, that they provide and all the convenience that they provide. But these countries aren't so good at, you know, state structure and governmental arrangement and providing, you know, a plethora of rights and citizen rights and liberties to their citizens as well. So I think Taiwan definitely shines when it comes to stuff like that. And I think the second major thing that this shows is the importance of free speech which is another thing that I think differentiates Taiwan from many of its neighbors. And there's three things I want to highlight here in regards to that. So first, you know, free speech allows for unencumbered dialogue to take place amongst citizens, right? And also not just amongst citizens, but between citizens and the state as well, right? So being able to freely engage with your fellow citizens and to search for that ultimate truth on various issues and problems that society faces. And also for the elected branches, right? And especially the government to know what is important and relevant to the people and to be able to respond to those requests from the people, right? And if democracy is about paying attention to citizens, then knowing what they want is, you know, key there, right? Secondly, free speech allows for people to know their true history, right? Beyond what the state is telling them is their true history, right? Beyond what is known in kind of these official documents, you know, such as constitutions or other things. The state may have one version of history, but free speech allows societies to have more than that official version, right? And that's inherently valuable. And I think something that, you know, Taiwan's neighbors probably miss out on. And finally, free speech allows for people and citizens to recognize and reflect on kind of constitutional mistakes, right? Mistakes exist, of course, in every regime, but free speech at least allows for the recognition and acknowledgement of those mistakes, right? And therefore the opportunity to put them right or to not make them again, right? And I think that also differentiates Taiwan from some of its neighbors. And so those are some kind of reflections on the book and kind of how it came together and some of kind of the important themes that I think it was trying to weave together. But I'd like to stop there and give Xiaowei and Jimmy the floor. So thanks very much. So I really appreciate being part of this project. And actually, last year, after I finished co-authoring this chapter with Ann Zhang of University of Hong Kong, I dealt deeper into into Taiwan's court decisions actually surveyed the whole decade that came before the sunflower movement. And I think there are very interesting things to observe by seeing how the court developed into develop all the models that help it cope with civil disobedience and culminating in sunflower movement. And so today, I will just give you a very, very quick picture of this chapter. This chapter we mean to compare Taiwan and Hong Kong and see how from the law side, from the court side, how do the court evaluate all these cases, very difficult cases, because civil disobedience by definition, by nature is a kind of case that straddles between the legal system and the political system. And so the next slide, please. Yes, please go on maybe several slides down. I will skip some of the because I don't have to explain to you all these basics about all these events. Next, please go on until the next slide. So, okay, so stop here. So I will tell you that the most interesting thing is that how do we compare the two societies? What are we comparing? So we have these court decisions before us. And the conclusions are very different. And there are some similarities, but there are difference. So I think the most important thing is that we have to find a framework, a theoretical framework that organizes all these, the two jurisdictions court decisions. And but civil disobedience literature is not really offering us much because most of it is in the political philosophy, political theory, and actually law from how do we deal with civil society from law's perspective, from the court's perspective. There's relatively rare theoretical framework. So we have to come up with our own. And we found this very interesting book that was actually in the, this version, this version, this edition was issued in 2001, but actually it came out in the 70s. And, and we find the Philip, Nonet and Philip Celtson's three models of law, politics, and society, very interesting. So let me go go through them very quickly. You find the three models very having great explanatory power for us. So the first is repressive law. In the repressive law model, the court is subject to political power. The basically the court identifies itself with the state and identifies itself as one arm of the state. Okay. And in the second model is autonomous law. And in autonomous law, autonomous law model, the court, it sees itself as an independent guardian of law that is distinguished, that is independent from politics, especially from the government. But it came as a prize because it has to distance itself from political questions. So it draws a very, very clear line. At least it tries to. It tries to, the court tries to draw a very clear line between law and politics. So when it comes to more political questions, the court can seem to be very conservative. But that is actually a prize for for independence, because the whole idea of autonomous law is that the court remains independent and remains aloof from political questions and stick to the law. And that is the law is the shelter for the court for it to do its own job. And at times it can use law to check the power of the government. So in this case, the court sees itself more as an independent arbiter of sociopolitical conflict. And the third model is responsive law. In this, under this model, the court sees itself as a social reformer. So it's still, it is still independent from politics, but it is more willing to engage itself with social transitions. So when there are social movement, it might just try to take sides, if the court sees, it does not distance itself from more political conflict. So when it, when the time comes, when the court sees itself as giving the last kick, and bring itself together for the benefit of social reform. So in this case, the court sees itself as a promotion, a promoter of certain direction of social reform. So next slide, please. So now we have the three models and still next, please. So we can have a quick look at, please go on next slide. Go on. A Hong Kong umbrella movement, no need to talk about the facts. So let's go on to the next slide. Joe, you can, yes. So the first series of cases is about Wang Jifeng, of course, him as a leader. And what's interesting is that, okay, the magistrate court or the district court, he was charged with all these charges. And he was found guilty, but he was given actually not so serious sentencing. But when it came to the court of appeal, because the secretary of justice appealed this case, he was not satisfied that the Wang Jifeng and others were given such lenient sentence. So at the second level, at the second instance of court, the court of appeal gave it six to eight months, more severe than the magistrate court. And at the same time, the court of appeal gave strict guidelines for disorderly assembly and degrees of violence. So this is a little bit more severe court decision. Okay, so let's move on to the court of final appeal. The court of final, Joe, please move on. The court of final appeal is the most interesting case in this series. So the court of final appeal says that the guideline can stand, but it should not be applicable to the present case. It should be applicable only to the future case. And so it reversed the severe sentence of court of appeal and upheld the magistrates court's lenient sentence. You can see here that the court of a final appeal here is treading on a very fine line. At the one hand, it, well, you can see that it tries to protect Wang Jifeng by going back to the magistrate court's lenient sentencing. But on the other hand, it seems that it cannot withstand the pressure from, you know, not just from the court of appeal, but maybe from the greater environment that there should be stricter measures being applied to these protesters in the future. So the basic idea is that even if we let go, let you go, just let you go with a lenient sentencing, in the future we're not going to be doing this. You should be watching out for yourself. So next slide. Please go on. Yes. So as we just mentioned, so here there are some very interesting reasoning in this case, but I think for the sake of time, I won't talk a lot about it. So the basic idea is that I think the court of final appeal is trying to wait into a very trouble water, but at the end of the day, it has to call it a day and say, okay, so in the future, things will be different. But so far as we can, we're going to try to protect these protesters. So next slide. So when we move on to Benny Dice's case, we can see, as Brian just mentioned, Benny has gone to jail for this case. And so we can see that in Benny Dice's case, the courts are actually using the stricter guidelines already. Okay, so let's move on. The next slide. Taiwan situation is more interesting. Go on, please. Taiwan's court, actually, you see that for the so sunflower movement has two main parts. The first part is, you know, the occupation of the legislative, the legislature. And for this part, the Taipei District Court case, the Taipei District Court came up with a very innovative decision. So basically, it sees a very interesting element in the criminal statute, saying that trespassing has to have, for a trespass to be established, you have to prove that they do not have, the prosecutor have to prove that they do not have a just cause. And the court sees the element of just cause and say, okay, if you bring into all these considerations of civil disobedience, the justification of civil disobedience, the theories of civil disobedience, all these considerations of their political legitimacy, then it may have a just cause, you know. So the idea is that the court is turning the political legitimacy into legal legitimacy, whereas in, you know, it's not necessarily the case that the court can do so, you know, under the rule of law or should do so. But it did so anyway. So it seems that the court was going out of its way to find them not guilty. Okay. And the next slide, please. So we have another series of cases. This series of cases concerns the other part of Sunflower, which is the invasion of the executive Yuan, the Premier's office. And in this case, especially in that Taiwan High Court, the Taiwan High Court says they're guilty. Okay, they found them guilty, but gave them lenient sentence. But the court seems to be very troubled about letting them go because the court says that no one should be privileged by their political viewpoint. And we are not in the position, basically, it says that we're not in the position to invent law. We are enforcers of law and not to invent law. And so we're not in a position to evaluate the legitimacy of their causes. Okay. So next slide, please. So to make a just to give you a whole picture. Okay. So the Hong Kong court, according to the framework that we just mentioned, the Hong Kong court is actually moving from being under a model of autonomous law to more repressive law. And this is tricky because we don't know exactly just how the courts are making the move because I have discussed with Ann and just we discussed just how whether the court was being driven by somehow, you know, political force, invisible political force, you know, into being more repressive, or it's just those judges seeing the political atmosphere, or they're they're just just exercising their political judgment in seeing that, okay, Hong Kong should not just in the future, if we allow this kind of protest to go on, you know, there will be even more severe situation, we just we simply don't know whether the court was coerced into being more repressive, or it's out of the court's own, you know, opinion or the court's own readjustment of its own rule. Okay. And on the Taiwan court side, Taiwan court is more ambivalent. We can see that I would say that the Taipei District Court that the the first case I talked about is more like responsive law, it's very willing to take sides. But whereas on the Taiwan Taiwan High Court, in the second case, the court remained more autonomous. So it seems that Taiwan's courts have been wavering between these two models. And these two models have their upsides and downsides, you know, for the for the court to remain autonomous, meaning that it distances itself from getting into the political mire. It preserve its own independence. And it preserve its own role, it maintains its own role as a neutral orbiter. But it cannot just just get itself in, get its own hands dirty and take sides. And maybe it loses the opportunity to give a push, give a boost to certain direction of social reform. Whereas on the on the responsive law side, the Taipei District Court, the first decision that we talked about, it also has its risks. Because when the court gets too deeply into the political questions and political evaluations, especially when the court is summoned to evaluate the causes, the political legitimacy of the of the protesters causes, it may get itself into very, very heated controversy in in the politics. And perhaps to the extent because if you can imagine in the future, Taiwan's future civil disobedience, what kind of causes will they be all interested in, or be engaged, you'd be concerned about, whether it's the nuclear power plant, or, you know, the the importation of American pork, you know, things like that, are the court ready to adjudicate on the legitimacy of these causes? So the at the end of the day, the question of Taiwan court is that whether it should normalize all these civil DCB and make them part of the legal system, or just treat the sunflower movement as an exception and leave it at that and try not to normalize it into democratic politics. I think that at the end of the day, that's the challenge that Taiwan's courts is facing. Okay, so I will I will end up here. Thank you very much. Okay, it's really happy to be back to SOA. I have the last meeting with the SOA student, very wonderful experience, and we talked discuss a lot about my topic. And today, I'm going to talk about the same sex marriage controversy in Taiwan. If you look at the table, table of contents of this book, you'll find this title a little bit bizarre, because what does same sex marriage have anything to do with China or China's influence? But the center central concern of this chapter is about the development of direct democracy in Taiwan. So let me explain this. Okay, first of all, this chapter I through reading the materials and documents of the debate during the advocacy and legislation stage of the Popular Voting Act. I found that the legislative debate of the popular voting in Taiwan had not discussed or consider the populist manipulation of direct democracy, nor the possibility of hurting minority groups. So I found that under the shadow of China, the debate on popular voting has been strongly associated with the political debate about the issue of unification and independence that is told to in Taiwan. So you can guess that K and T will do whatever they take to make the popular voting very difficult or impossible. But DPP will try very hard to make popular voting equal to popular sovereignty and a possible tool to realize people's will to support independence. So under these backdrops, when popular voting become realized by the enactment of Popular Voting Act, you can see that the first version of the PVA was very strict. The threshold of the passage was very high. So people usually mark the PVA as popular voting in the birth cage. The evidence shows that from 2003 to 2018, there were six propositions submitted for the ballot. But only the no one, actually, none of them were successfully passed the threshold. After the sunflower movement, when the Taiwan has very high political strength to political reform, the new power party, they vowed to reform the problematic representative democracy. That is the reason why the sunflower movement took place. So they proposed a bill that lowered the threshold of the PVA to just a simple majority vote and the 25% of the eligible voters as opposed to the previous version as 50%. So after the revision in 2017, the ballot questions become very different from the previous six. In the previous six ballot questions, most of them are about the relationship between Taiwan and China. So there were more partisan oriented and about the unification and independence. But after the revision of the PVA, the ballot question become diversified and more down to people's life and the social issues. So they become less partisan. So seven out of the 16 propositions of the last round took place in 2018, seven of them met the threshold. So they passed the threshold and the government should do something to conform with the result of the ballot outcome. So then let's talk about, move on to the relationship, how the popular voting has anything to do with the same sex marriage. Because in Taiwan, there are social movements, same sex marriage movement pushing forward to the legislation. And also they try the litigation approach to achieve their goal. But the anti same sex marriage camp, they try very hard using the popular voting as their strategy to achieve their agenda. So way before the revision of PVA in 2017, the anti same sex camp had already proposed a proposition to oppose the same sex marriage bill in 2015. But at that time, all the propositions submitted should be reviewed by the national referendum review committee. And the committee rejected the proposal saying that the wording of the proposition was to obscure and to vague. Because right then, there were no same sex marriage law or nor any same sex marriage bill passed in the parliament. So what was their target? It is an empty one. So they rejected the proposal. But in this round of popular voting campaign, the anti same sex marriage camp learned that they can quickly collect the signature and very fast through the churches, through the school network. And they think they showcase their ability to push forward the anti same sex marriage agenda. So they think their political muscles are strong enough to push forward their agenda by popular voting if the PVA was revised. So they became to call themselves the silent majority and they began to adopt the popular voting as their movement strategy. So one of their movement frame, the main frame is let marriage and family matters be decided by the people. So they supported the revision of the PVA from 2016 to 2017. They assert that the popular voting is the best way to allow people to exercise their sovereignty. And they are so very important and controversial social issues should be decided by the people instead of by the the PV, the political elites, they call them political elites. And they also not only opposed the political elite in the parliament, they also opposed these the judicial elites in the Supreme Court or the constitutional court. So before the constitutional court announced that it will review the same sex marriage petition in 2017, the anti same sex marriage groups have already expressed their strong opposition. They don't want the judicial elites to decide the the marriage definition. So they not only contended that the definition of marriage should not be a matter for constitutional court, but also should not be decided by any judiciary because it lacked democratic legitimacy. And they asked the justice to step aside of this this issue and not to side with what they call dominant minority. And they think the minority are bullying the oppressed majority. So as you all know that the the constitutional court ultimately come up made up made the decision we call interpretation number 748. So after right after the ruling was rendered, the same anti same sex group have hold the protest immediately outside of the constitutional court. And right at the press conference, they say that the they are going to initiate a popular voting. And the campaign was will be would be launched right after the announcement. This part of the civil code versus special law debate was a little bit complicated. But let me try to simplify it to just two slides. I would say that the civil code versus special law debate was a very unique feature of Taiwan's same sex debate. And that is when people talk about say about civil code, it means it means the traditional marriage heterosexual marriage. When people talk about special law, what they really mean is that they can give the same sex couple of civil union or domestic partnership other than the traditional marriage. So when we talked about whether we are going to give the same sex couple the marriage, we say that do you support civil code, minfa or drunfa special law. So the other the other movement frame is that same sex couples shall be protected by enacting a special law. So in the anti same sex marriage camp, what they really meant that the special law was that we don't want to give you marriage. We want to keep traditional marriage to to heterosexual couples, but you can get some kind of union or partnership, but don't change the definition of the traditional marriage. But after this slogan was proposed, no special law was ever proposed. That means special law was just an empty words. There was no content of any kind. They didn't want to talk about whether civil union is better or domestic partnership is better for the protection of the same sex couples. They just express their their opinion that don't touch traditional marriage. So I tried to I tried to make this chart to explain the civil code versus special law debate. You can see that actually if you even if you say that we use special law to protect same sex couple, it is still possible to give them marriage, not just alternatives. But if you but when you say I want to protect same sex couple using civil code, it doesn't mean that they they can be protected by marriage. They can also be be provided by alternatives in civil code. So there were ABCD positions for possible positions. But when people talked about civil code versus special law code, special law, what the anti same sex marriage camp means is the position D. That is the special law with alternatives. The form of your relationship is alternatives. But when they when people think about civil code or special law, they could possibly think about ABCD. So when I support special law, it could be I supporting same sex marriage given by special law or alternatives given by special law. So there it is very complicated for people to understand what civil code versus special law mean. So the anti same sex camp, they use this confusion and design to proposition proposition saying the first one, do you agree that marriage, the original proposition was the sentence without the underlying words. So at first, they come up with this proposition 10, do you agree that marriage should be restricted to the union between a man and woman? That is the definition of marriage. And the original one, original proposition 12 is the, do you agree with protecting same sex cobbles rights of permanent cap, cohabitation without the underlying words. But the government said when you propose the pop up the Bella question, you cannot do it violating what the constitutional court has already rendered. It means you should protect equal marriage, the right to equal marriage for same sex couples. So the anti same sex marriage came at the underlying words. So it means do you agree that marriage as defined in the civil code should be restricted to the union between a man and a woman? That means in this one, you have to strike out the position A as possibility and it left BCD for people to choose. That is the first one, the meaning behind the first proposition 10. And together with proposition 12, when the underlying wording was added, it means that BCD should be, if the proposition 12 was passed, it should be restricted to proposition C. It means proposition 12 means that you should protect same sex couples by special law. So the answer can be C or D. But when the anti same sex couple doing their campaign, they keep going to tell people that we are supporting the position D. But actually, position D is a violation of interpretation number 748. That cannot be possible. And they know that, so they changed the wording and added the underlying wording to this. So I would call this the populace design for voters confusion. Our voters didn't really know what they are voting. So when the outcome, the outcome is that 7 million people vote yes to the proposition 10 and 6.4 million vote yes to the proposition 12. But then what? How do the parliament enact a law that conforms both the interpretation number 748 and the result of the population votes? Then proposition C is the only possibility. So our parliament passed a special law to protect same sex marriage. So they conform to demands at the same time. So the DDP whip in the parliament, he said during the review, he said, even a person like me who object the same sex marriage must face the authority of the constitution. He said that justice interpreted the constitution and demanded that we enact a law to allow same sex couples to marry. Do we legislators have any room to negotiate and compromise otherwise? But I will argue that what if the structure of the parliament and also the ruling party is the political structure are very different from what we have at that time? Will they conform with their conform with interpretation number 748, which is the decision of the constitutional court and the constitution said that we should protect people's rights to equal marriage. So how about next time? So I would say this time we have a safe result, but we don't know what will happen next time when during the voting, the popular voting process, the populace manipulation again and again was repeated. So I like to quote Ko Jianmin's this statement. He said that we need to bow to the constitution. No one can stand opposed to the constitution, which is the meaning, one of the meaning of rule of law. So what will be next time? So it concludes my presentation. Thank you. Wow, fantastic. So thanks all three of you for your kind of Brian Freese overview and the two of you for discussing your chapters. I've got a lot of questions, but I know you've got some questions as well. So let me just speak to just a couple of things. One is about the future of doing Hong Kong-Taiwan comparison. This is something that's been raised recently with some of my students about whether that comparison is still valid. Does the Hong Kong issue still really matter when we're looking at Taiwan? Because I think one of the things that comes out from Brian's opening remarks and it's come through in some of my students' research is that things in Hong Kong have changed so much. The place has become almost unrecognizable politically compared to just a couple of years ago. So that was the first question about whether the future will still be doing Hong Kong-Taiwan comparison. And the second question was a way I was trying to link Jimmy and Xiaowei's presentations. Because I was curious about, for Xiaowei's case, if you were trying to apply the framework that Jimmy was using, so would you kind of basically, on a slightly different issue, do you see the courts as being fitting into that responsive category? And has that always been the case post-transition? Because when I was listening to Jimmy's presentation, I was also thinking about change in different presidential terms. Because I was curious, like Jimmy mentioned, that after he had done the paper, he had kind of gone back and done even longer term analysis. And I was kind of thinking, if we, let's say, take this framework back into the Lidonghuai era, where we would fit that framework, as it was making a transition also probably from repressive to autonomous, so there were just a few thoughts. Let me hand over to you before I hand over to the audience. Do you want, I'll go ahead and just answer. Yeah, so that's a great question about whether or not the Hong Kong-Taiwan comparative kind of context is still valid. I mean, yeah, I'd say I would struggle to make it nowadays. I think it's becoming, from everything that we've seen, and I think we're even struggling kind of at the end of the book, to know, as I said, kind of, where do we stop? And also, are these comparisons potentially getting a little bit strained because of where Hong Kong was moving maybe as well? So I think, yeah, I think it's much more difficult to make those Taiwan-Hong comparisons than before. I mean, that being said, though, I mean, you still have UK judges sitting on the Court of Final Appeal, and so you still have some of these elements of kind of the Hong Kong justice system that are still there, right? So you still have some foreign judges on some of these major courts and involved in some of these major trials. So people could say that that's valid, right? That that's legitimizing the Hong Kong justice system. I think so there's kind of two elements. I think kind of politically, maybe those elements would be really strained to make a kind of a straight comparison. But maybe if you're just looking at kind of the legal operation of things and kind of the justice system, maybe those are more manageable to make. But yeah, I think you're right. It's getting really strained and I find it difficult to make that comparison nowadays. But I'd be interested to see what Jimmy and Shawei think as well. Shawei, should you go first? Okay, just a quick response to the question about the constitutional court. I would say this one, this term of the constitutional justice, they are really responsive court, because I think they consider themselves a social reformer. So if you can observe what the decision they have made in this term, there are the decriminalization of adultery. There are some about the transitional justice. Yeah. And also the biggest one is considered the same sex marriage. And when the proposition 10 and 12 were submitted by this anti-Sem sex camp, the chief justice may release a press conference and reiterate again that the decision of the constitutional court should be obeyed by people and also by the government. So they are very active and try to persuade people that you cannot. It is impossible to overrule or override the constitutional court decision just by popular voting. Thank you. I agree with Shawei that the current term of constitutional court is quite responsive. And my chapter actually brings up an interesting dimension of studying into Taiwan's judiciary, because a constitutional court is definitely something very special in the whole judicial system compared to ordinary courts. And one thing we have to bear in mind, comparing the same sex marriage case and all the civil disobedience cases, that the same sex marriage case is directly involving basic rights. There are specific people being influenced by such decisions. So it gives the constitutional court a great legitimacy of stepping in and make a decision on whether to be responsible or not. But consider Sunflower Movement. It's about the future, the future of Taiwan's democracy. It's not directly concerning particular person's basic rights. So it's a very, very broad sweeping political controversy. And you can have very strong opinions about it. People can have very strong opinion about it. So the ordinary courts, they do not have that hive of a status as the constitutional court. So the ordinary court has been confused and they are trying, experimenting different ways of responding to this. And I think it's very interesting to see how they do so. And talking about the long term observation, I think I will have to do more study. But from the decade that I looked into, it's obvious that before 2008, the Taiwan's court was in an era when they were transforming from being repressive to autonomous. And by doing that transformation, the court is growing more and more lenient on these protesters, even though they might still find them guilty. But after Mainzhou was elected, especially the second term of Mainzhou, Mainzhou's presidency, you can see that it's very interesting because Mainzhou's presidency has been contested by Taiwan's civil society to the extent that they associate the Mainzhou's agenda as selling Taiwan to China or it is a comeback of the authoritarian KMT. These claims may be controversial and may be overblown to some extent. But that kind of association, the imaginative association, gives the protesters and also a certain portion of the Taiwan's legal professionals a very strong claim to undermine the government's any kind of severe response. So the courts are motivated to try to find ways not just to be lenient, but actually find ways to find them not guilty. And what's interesting is that it is actually bringing pressure on the idea of rule of law. Because I have been invited by the Supreme Court to offer my expert opinion on the Sunfire case. And I do see that a lot of people, especially the prosecutors, the prosecutors are very confused of what they are seeing right now because isn't it law that we have been enforcing? And isn't the law, shouldn't the law be stable and consistent across the board? And everybody enjoys the same access and also the same equal liberties under the law. And why do you, civil disobedience, why do you protesters expect to be treated any different than any other lawbreakers, even though we might, we support giving you lenient sentence. But why do you find yourself so legitimate in claiming that you should be found not guilty? So I find the prosecutors very confused. So now we are in the situation of just whether we, the court, I think the court is also considering just whether we should leave the sunflower movement, consider it as an exceptional stage of Taiwanese democratic development. Just leave it at that. Let's go back to normal. Or we should just normalize what they do and put it into an integral, treated as an integral part of the rule of law. And make the rule of law more elastic, more responsive to those claims of the protesters. I think it's a very tricky situation that Taiwan's courts is facing.