On July 2, 2020, Ambassador Lily Hsu of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in New York—on behalf of the ROC (Taiwan) government—presented Professor Jerome A. Cohen of the New York University School of Law and founder and director emeritus of its US-Asia Law Institute, as well as an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, with the Order of the Brilliant Star with Grand Cordon in a virtual ceremony. The medal is in recognition of Professor Cohen’s outstanding contributions to advancing Taiwan-US academic exchanges on law and friendly cooperative relations.
In her remarks, Ambassador Hsu said, “Jerry has long been a great friend of Taiwan. He visited the island country for the first time in 1961, and has traveled there numerous times since,” adding that “It’s fair to say that Jerry has not only witnessed the entire transformation of Taiwan into the full-fledged democracy that it is today, but also played no small role in the process.”
Ambassador Hsu praised Professor Cohen for his integrity by staying true to the universal values of constitutionalism, government under law, judicial independence, and political democracy. She extended Taiwan’s appreciation for his constant championing of the nation’s human rights development, rule of law and democratization, as well as advocating for Taiwan’s international participation.
Having Professor Cohen as a staunch supporter of Taiwan given his academic and personal stature, Ambassador Hsu stressed, “is one of the best gifts we could ever have asked for.”
Professor Cohen thanked the government and people of the ROC (Taiwan) for this decoration, saying that he’s deeply touched. He noted that Taiwan has made tremendous progress in human rights and rule of law since he first visited there in 1961, pointing to the establishment of the National Human Rights Commission as a recent success.
Having twice served as an expert reviewer for Taiwan’s national human rights reports, Professor Cohen said that one of the things that struck him is the “excessive Chinese modesty of the government officials, the democratic politicians, the NGOs, the public intellectuals, the law professors and others who still had the feeling that Taiwan is barely off the ground, and hasn’t approached the level of progress of other democratic governments” such as Japan and South Korea. “And I have to say, you people have to recognize you’re now an advanced democracy.” He went on to say that he is “proud to be associated with the government of the Republic of China on Taiwan and all of those who have struggled for decades to make Taiwan what it is.”
Professor Cohen added that, “Today as we witness the terrible adverse transformation of Hong Kong, and the reign of dictatorship on the mainland, we have to look to Taiwan as a continuing beacon of progress.”
Professor Cohen is a leading expert on Chinese law and government, as well as a pioneer in the studies and teaching of Asian law in the United States. He has long followed Taiwan’s legal reforms and human rights development, written extensively on the subject. Most recently, he co-edited “Taiwan and International Human Rights: A Story of Transformation” with Taiwan’s former Constitutional Court Justice Chang-fa Lo and Professor William P. Alford, a valuable contribution to the literature on Taiwan’s human rights. Professor Cohen retired from full time teaching, according to the US-Asia Law Institute, on June 30, 2020, one day before his 90th birthday.
Observing the virtual ceremony were Professor Ira Belkin, Professor Frank Upham and Dr. Katherine Wilhelm of the US-Asia Law Institute; Dr. Yu-Jie Chen of Academia Sinica; Professor Margaret Lewis of Seton Hall University; former Justice Chang-fa Lo; and Professor Jiunn-rong Yeh of National Taiwan University.