Lung-chu Chen

Professor of Law
Founder and President,
New Century Institute

Passionately committed to fostering a global understanding of hisnative land, Taiwan, Lung-chu Chen has founded a dual-nation think tank based in both the United States and Taiwan and dedicated to the advancement of human dignity values for Taiwan as well as for the world community.

An internationally recognized scholar of international law, human rights law, and U.S. constitutional law, Professor Chen, who has taught at New York Law School since 1977, has worked with a variety of government agencies, nonprofit groups, and private firms throughout his distinguished career. He is also senior research scholar at Yale Law School.

Professor Chen has worked with the Council of International Affairs of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York and the Executive Council of the American Society of International Law. He was editor of Human Rights (ABA Section Journal). He is a former vice president of the International League for Human Rights and has continued to serve on its Governing Council; he has also been chairman of the AALS Section on International Law and president of the North America Taiwanese Professors’ Association (NATPA). He is a member of the following boards of directors: American Society of Comparative Law, Policy Sciences Center, and Resource Center of the United Nations. In addition, he is a member of both the American Law Institute and the board of editors of the American Journal of Comparative Law. Professor Chen has appeared extensively as a commentator for newspapers, television, and radio.

From his position at the head of the think tanks he founded, as chairman of the Taiwan New Century Foundation and president of the U.S.-based New Century Institute, he is able to influence policy-makers in Taiwan, and acts as an advisor to the president of the island nation. In September 2003, the Institute sponsored the International Conference on the United Nations at the Yale Club of New York City.

Professor Chen is editor in chief of a quarterly journal published by the two think tanks and writes a weekly editorial comment for Taiwanese TV.

Professor Chen, who spends one semester in New York and one semester in Taiwan each year, is also passionately committed to legal education and to promoting the rule of law.

“We are talking about a highly interdependent world and we need to remember that a lawyer here in this country needs to relate to the larger world. I try to equip the students with appropriate perspectives and basic knowledge in a progressive way on what international law is all about,” Professor Chen says.

Professor Chen is a graduate of National Taiwan University, Northwestern University, and Yale University. He ranked first of 4,000 participants in Taiwan’s national examination for judgeship and other high governmental posts in 1957 and graduated first in his class from the Department of Law of the National Taiwan University in 1958.

Professor Chen writes extensively about Taiwan’s relations with the U.S. and the U.N., publicly backing Taiwan’s efforts to gain membership in the world body. His textbook, An Introduction to Contemporary International Law (Yale University Press, 2d ed. 2001), has been widely adopted.

“I study and teach about the U.N. and world order, expounding on important U.N. roles in maintaining a minimum world order of international peace and security.”