Strolling in the NTU campus in March, apart from the tall coconut trees that had been no stranger to visitors, one could also perceive varieties of colors along the road. Red, pink, white, and purple clusters of flowers remind us of the time we celebrate our annual event of blossoms: The Azalea Festival. Since 1997, the Azalea Festival had seen a long history of National Taiwan University. In this year’s events, we had a book fair sponsored by the Main Library; an exhibition of Top 50 Agricultural Issues in Taiwan; the Very Fun Park Art Exhibition; and an ornamental plants Expo and more. The most popular event of all was the Departments’ Expo, which provided high school students with an opportunity to explore each department, and allow them to be more prepared when it comes the time to plan for their higher education.

The two-day Departments’ Expo. commenced after the opening ceremony on 3/14 morning. The Festival could be seen as two separate parts inside and outside of the Sports Center. Outside the center was the Clubs’ Expo, a real representation of our diversity and development of clubs in NTU; inside was the Departments’ Expo, which attracted numerous high school students throughout Taiwan. The stand of Law School was located at the 3rd floor, decorated with the theme of the Goddess of Justice.

In addition to the basic curricular information, the information about students’ possible career development and some examples of application to our department were provided at the Law School stand. We also handed out notes for high school students to write down their future goals and wishes. On the other side of the stand, the robes of lawyers, judges, and prosecutors, were available for try-on to those interested. The chair of the Academic Division, 許凱翔, who was in charge of this activity, said that the stand for this year was like last year and many years before that. The staff all worked hard to familiarize high school students with the Law School curriculum, future career development by preparing brochures and setting up posters.

Many Law School students happily volunteered to explain every aspect of the Law Department to high school students. One of the volunteers, 宇善蓉, once had a rough time deciding if it was ever meaningful to choose Law as her major, was willing to share her thoughts with the participants. In addition, this year the chair explicitly pointed out the purpose of the Azalea Festival was not only to introduce NTU Law to the participants but also to help them reassure it’s their suitable major. We wanted to help high school students think about the following: “does the Law school curriculum really fit my own personality?” Another volunteer discovered that after the two-day event, plenty of high school students have an impression that Law School students have to memorize lots of Law articles throughout their study, which in not entirely true. We hope that through our clarification during the event, high school students who are truly fit for the Law School would be more determined; and those aren’t, can make their decisions to choose other fields in an earlier stage.

For the activities, we designed a field game with three simple stages. Every participant could win a small but exquisite reward. Those who won the game got a pen shaped like a mallet. With this field game we hoped participants could learn more about legal materials such as constitutional interpretations. One of the participants said this activity helped him get a broad picture about what Law School is like.

Many high school students came to this exhibition with a longing for joining the top university of Taiwan. Therefore, one of the goals of this festival was to provide application information to them, who just finished the General College Entrance Exam and are preparing for their application.

Among all the stands in the festival, the Law School stand was one of the most visited. Many visitors indicated they gained useful information about our department. Also, some got more determined to making their decision to join Law school. Others said commentators helped solve their confusion about the differences between the three divisions. In addition, one of the commentators said she was inspired by the enthusiasm of those high school students and this inspiration would last throughout her education in Law School.

NTU Azalea Festival this year ended with piles of petals and cheerfulness from the crowds of people. We hoped every visitor had found their call here and is ready to set off for their goals just like our slogan: “stroll in the town of flowers, step toward the splendor of light.”

Writers: Freshmen, 羊振邦, 溫晴方, 許瀞方

Translator: 張彥麟

For more information: NTU LAW Student Association

College of Law, National Taiwan University had signed an scholarly exchange agreement with Graduate School of Law, Meiji University, Japan on November 21st, 2014, which made two of us sister schools. In order to strengthen the bond between the two schools, the 1st exchange seminar took place on March 13th, 2015. We are of course looking forward to more of these similar opportunities that serve as platforms for scholars from both schools.

In the 1st exchange seminar, Dean AonoSatoru, Professor Kawachi Hiroyuki among other professors from Meiji, Dean Ming-Yan Shieh, Professor Sheng-Lin Jan, and Professor Kuan-Ling Shen from NTU were invited to participate and comment. Also, 3 doctoral students from each school presented their research about civil law structure, contracts, and civil law procedure.

Through this seminar, both parties had the opportunity to better understand civil law issues of each other. We also gained different perspectives regarding Taiwan’s civil laws from comments provided by Professors from Meiji. We believe that this exchange seminar would be a stepping stone for a long lasting academic relationship between NTU and Meiji.

With a continued interaction in the future, laws research of both schools and even of both countries would largely benefit from this opportunity.

Mr. Bing Huang Zhang graduated from NTU law, now is the Managing Director and CEO of United Asia Finance Limited in Hong Kong. On account of devoting in promoting public welfare, meanwhile paying the attention to the development of Taiwan legal studies, Mr. Zhang has founded “the Maestro’s Lecture” to provide for academic. Using this opportunity, we held a seminar with Institutum Iurisprudentiae, Academia Sinica, and honestly invited the professor Adrian Vermeule from Harvard law school to give a speech, who was elected the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2012, specializing in Constitution and Administrative Law.

The speech topic was about his book “The Constitution of Risk”, which was published last year. Prof. Vermeule brought a new way of thinking about the constitutionalism which broadened our horizon. He explained the two models of constitutionalism, one is Precautionary Constitutionalism, and the other is Optimizing Constitutionalism. Based on the latter theory, he argued that modern constitutionalism should open a door for public powers to private sector in protection of people’s liberty from harm and merely taking the constitutional rules as tyranny avoiding or abuse preventive is mistaken. To support his argument, he incorporated some modeling theories for risk regulations, such as the concepts of countervailing risks in contrast with target risks.

In this seminar, participants were very interested in the utility and the possibility of the functionality of the presenter’s theory and whether it can truly provide a guideline for constitution modification. This seminar attracted highly attention, in addition to our students, the prof. Chin-Wen Wu from National Chengchi University College of law and the prof. Ren-Chuan Kao from National Taipei University College of law also brought their students to join. All participants actively interacted and communicated in the seminar. They systemically recognized the meaning of the constitution, liberty and risk, and used a comparative way to think the case differences between U.S and Taiwan. This seminar brought great benefit for our department as to promote the international academic exchanges. We will continually invite the scholars from other countries, and welcome teachers and students to join these activities to enjoy the feast of knowledge altogether.