| This dissertation studies Taiwan's legal culture by examining the evolution of Taiwan's family law. The purpose is to offer a better understanding why Taiwan has achieved significant economic growth without apparent help from the formal legal system, seemingly in contradiction to traditional Western wisdom that economic development and the rule of law have to go hand in hand.;One popular theory seeks answers in the so-called "traditional value system"---Confucianism---which, according to some scholars, has shaped Taiwan's passive and reluctant legal culture. This dissertation rejects such argument on the ground that it not only overestimates the impact of traditional values on modern Taiwan but also fails to take into account institutional and structural variables. As people's attitudes and behavior are often shaped or constrained by the environment and social structure, Taiwanese legal culture is under the direct influence of its political structure and formal legal system. Prior to recent democratization, the authoritarian regime had constructed the formal legal system to serve its own political purpose---i.e. to maintain stringent social control. As a result, the system lacked flexibility and was much more retardant to social or cultural changes than its counterparts in the western societies. It prevented norm entrepreneurs---the facilitators of social changes---from transforming people's needs and preferences into social forces, and it put teeth to the government's purposeful endorsement of "traditional values," as evident in the ways family laws are codified and enforced.;After the democratization in the early 1990's, nevertheless, the new legal culture has emerged. Drawing on studies on recent family law reforms and cases of judicial divorce, custody and adoption, the dissertation argues that under the new legal culture, Taiwanese people are gradually seeing the legal system as an instrument to protect individual autonomy and to pursue total justice and equality. |
