Chuan-feng Wu, Institutum Iurisprudentiae of the Academia Sinica in Taiwan; Wen-Tsong Chiou, Institutum Iurisprudentiae of the Academia Sinica in Taiwan; Trang (Mae) Nguyen, Temple University Beasley School of Law; Roderick Hills, NYU Law

Event Description:
This is the final talk in our three-part series, COVID and Constitutions, which explores how the current pandemic challenges national and international legal orderings. This week, Professors Chuan-feng Wu, Wen-Tsong Chiou, and Trang Nguyen talk about why Taiwan and Vietnam have succeeded in containing the virus more successfully than most other nations, at least so far. Are their achievements sui generis, or are there lessons for other governments in the ways their constitutional and legal systems allocate authority in a public health crisis? Their governments could hardly be more different: Taiwan is a multi-party democracy while Vietnam is a single-party authoritarian regime that ruthlessly suppresses dissent. Yet in the face of COVID, Taiwan enforced mandatory quarantine measures with cell phone tracking and rationed tracked its citizens’ purchase of masks, while Vietnam’s often-secretive leadership experimented with new transparency.