A Brief Introduction of the Institute

After years of preparation, in 2004 Graduate Institute of Interdisciplinary Legal Studies started to admit students interested in pursuing collaborative legal education combined with other disciplines. The establishment of the Institute reflects a need to prepare future legal experts capable to respond to the modern legal order and contribute to the betterment of our society.

Legal education in the 21st century faces enormous challenges that arose from the advancements in telecommunication and information technologies which sparked fierce cross-border competition and created new legal issues that our society must face. Recent developments in genetics and biotechnology have also broadened the scope of legal research and practice, requiring us to examine law in the context of morality, ethics and environment.

Another challenge to traditional legal education is emerging from inequalities between countries and different priorities they pursue due to domestic conditions. Lack of stable economic growth, poverty and other social problems resulted in absence of constitutionalism, rule of law and democracy in many nations. Additionally, following the new post-cold war political landscape, many countries struggle to protect human rights and are unable to guarantee civil liberties to citizens. Even in Taiwan, although constitutionalism and democracy are universally accepted, there are still conflicting opinions about the specific ways of realizing these aspirations.

Following the establishment of the World Trade Organization (the WTO), countries became even more interconnected, resulting in many domestic and international legal conflicts. The legal regime established in the WTO requires members to reform their domestic regulations and demonstrate greater commitments to their trade partners. In addition to challenges created by the WTO, Taiwan also has a complicated relationship with China, both as partners in the WTO and as close neighbors separated by the Taiwan Strait. In the past, legal education did not provide students with opportunities to study macro-economics and offered little training in financial and business law. Thus, our institute is aware of the need to reform our education system and to provide greater training to our future law experts who will be prepared to respond to these challenges in the coming future.

As scholars and students of law, we must ask ourselves whether the current legal system is able to respond to these emerging challenges and whether the current legal education is sufficient to prepare the next generation of legal experts to face the emerging challenges to law and society. Recognizing the abovementioned developments in legal studies, NTU College of Law established the Graduate Institute of Interdisciplinary Legal Studies, designed to admit students with strong background in other fields to be trained as legal professionals and researchers.

We have a strong belief that all fields of studies including economics, political science, commerce, sociology and philosophy, can be integrated into the studies of law. The College of Law at NationalTaiwan University has its long tradition of legal research and legal education. National TaiwanUniversity prides itself as being the most prestigious institution of higher learning in Taiwan and offers a comprehensive curriculum in hundreds of fields. Thus, the College of Law has experience and resources needed to facilitate interdisciplinary learning. We hope that the Institute will become the most prominent institution that trains future legal practitioners and scholars with particular focus on technology, sustainable development; human rights protection, constitutionalism, finance, taxation, economics, trade and national development.

Research and Study Facilities

College of Law facilities are shared by the Department of law and Graduate Institute of Interdisciplinary Legal Studies. A short description of these facilities is provided below:

Library

We consider the library as center of intellectual life at our College. The library system comprises NTU Library, College of Law Library, and College of Social Sciences Library). Our library has made serious strides in becoming the top law research facility in Taiwan and currently holds more than 47,000 print volumes, Including master theses, doctor dissertations, and up to 270 kinds of volumes in law. The library also provide several electronic databases, including Fa Yuan Law Sources, Root Grand Legal Database, Westlaw International Hein-On-Line, Lexis-Nexis JP, Lexis-Nexis Recht and so on.

Computers

Computer facilities can be found throughout the College of Law. In addition to the library, the computer lab in Tsai Lecture Hall features 20 Windows-based computers installed with word processing, spreadsheet data analysis and presentation software. Internet access and online research via web databases such as WESTLAW is also available. Laser and inkjet printers are available for students who wish to print documents.

Additionally, law students possessing laptops may take advantage of the NTU wireless internet which is available in 90% of the campus. Our well-established web facilities help to enhance communication between faculty and students and better our learning environment.