This article examines four global trends with regard to the legal recognition of same-sex couples: access to the rights of opposite-sex cohabiting couples, access to a registered partnership law as an alternative to marriage, access to marriage, and access to joint legal parenthood (through joint or second-parent adoption or after assisted reproduction). Developments since 2017 in Taiwan in relation to same-sex marriage and adoption by same-sex couples are then compared with these global trends. The article concludes that developments in Taiwan are entirely “normal”. Other countries have allowed same-sex couples to marry, while withholding access to joint adoption, or preventing non-citizens from marrying. Taiwan’s restrictions are likely to be temporary, as they have been in other countries. Full legal equality, with no exceptions, will eventually be achieved.

Sticking to the Past: Same-sex Union and Original Meaning in Hong Kong

This article builds on the author’s work on the uses of history by the Hong Kong law courts in the context of sexual minority rights, and focuses on the judicial turn to original meaning in the territory’s latest case on marriage equality: MK v. HKSAR. In that case, the Court of First Instance held that neither the government’s refusal to legalize same-sex marriage nor its failure to provide an alternative framework for the recognition of same-sex relationships was unconstitutional. In particular, the court reasoned that the meaning of “marriage” in Article 37 of the Basic Law, which guarantees the right to marry and to raise a family freely, should be determined in light of the understanding of the term when the constitutional document was promulgated. I argue that the court’s insistence on original meaning goes against the grain of the majority judgment in W v. Registrar of Marriages, which to date remains the only case on the right of marry from Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal. I further argue that despite the Court of First Instance’s reliance on lex specialis, there is significant precedential force for the introduction of both same-sex marriage and civil partnerships in Hong Kong.

Barring Married Same-Sex Couples from Joint Adoption: Comparative Perspectives and the Case of Taiwan

Taiwan is the first country in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage, but it forbids married same-sex couples from jointly adopting children. This article examines this restriction through the lens of comparative law, which brings into focus two main insights. First, we see that, out of all countries that have legalized same-sex marriage, Taiwan is one of only two that bar married same-sex couples from joint adoption. As this article will explain, the fact that Taiwan’s policy is so anomalous should spur skepticism of the policy’s appropriateness. Second, judicial opinions from around the world contain persuasive reasoning that further calls into question Taiwan’s treatment of married same-sex couples. This article explains that these findings, taken together, cast enormous doubt on the constitutionality of Taiwan’s exclusionary adoption policy.

Comparative Studies of Enforcement and Compensation of Securities Cases and Lessons for the Chinese Securities Law 2019

China just introduced its version of private securities class action rule in the Securities Law of the PRC 2019. It combines an opt-out rule with a public agency as the representative of plaintiffs’ groups, which intends to control frivolous litigation. This article argues that this rule is inefficient and proposes a new public-and-private-convergence enforcement model based on the following studies. Firstly, from the history of the regulation of securities market in the US, UK, and Australia, this article finds out that neither the private class action nor the public enforcement should be used alone as the primary enforcement method. Because a full-scale class action tends to over-deter and public enforcement tends to under-deter. Also, the compensation rate is low and the resolution time is long. Secondly, based on the experiences of private securities class action cases in the US, Australia, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, this article finds out that it is hard to adjust the incentives of private securities class action to achieve balance. Moreover, since the optimal deterrence level is hard to ascertain, so without this benchmark we could not know what the right number of cases is, which makes the theory of using a full-scale US-style private securities class action to increase deterrence level questionable. Then, this article turns to examine ADR in the US and the Netherlands--Arbitration and Settlement to see if they can be alternatives to the private class action, but finds out they are not suitable to resolve cases on a large scale. Lastly, due to the above failures, this article proposed that a new enforcement style combining private enforcement with public enforcement should be built. To rebuild the enforcement model, we should reconsider our policy indicators, and turn to focus on increasing the compensation rate and decreasing enforcement costs rather than increasing the numbers of cases. Based on this policy choice, this article proposes a new enforcement style combining private enforcement with public enforcement from the experiences of different jurisdictions, including the UK, Australia, Denmark, where the resolution, especially the compensation regime is led by the securities regulator instead of the court.