Wed, Feb 17, 2016 page11

• The Plain Law Movement 法律白話文運動

  • • 
    • 
    • 

  Many events that take place in society involve complicated legal concepts. For instance, the designer of the Taipei Lantern Festival’s Fu Lu Monkey lantern has been accused of plagiarism, which has to do with the Copyright Act. Graduates of law institutes at Soochow University and other institutions have created a Facebook page called the “Plain Law Movement” to analyze current affairs that the public is concerned about from the perspective of law and discuss them in plain language, aiming to provide diverse and often overlooked viewpoints.

  The “Plain Law Movement” was created in 2014 and has discussed many current topics such as the controversial curriculum guideline changes, the tainted cooking oil scandal involving Ting Hsin International Group, marriage equality and so on. Founder Yang Kuei-chih says the Web site was created during the Sunflower movement, when an Internet version of the “cross-strait trade in services agreement for dummies” was popular on the Web. The founders felt that the information contained in the dummies guide was less than perfectly accurate, especially the parts about international law, so they aspired to make use of what they had learned in school to provide the general public with objective knowledge.

  At first, the Web site only discussed the service trade agreement, but, to their surprise, their articles drew interest among netizens. After the Sunflower movement ended, the team decided to go on running the Web site and use it to explore other law-related subjects. Tsai Meng-han, who is a practicing lawyer and author of some of the online articles, says they do not mean to tell their readers what is “good or bad;” instead, they take subjects that closely concern the public, analyze them from a legal point of view and let the readers be their own judges.

  

  Members of the “Plain Law Movement” pose for photos on Feb. 5 in Taipei. 「法律白話文運動」成員二月五日於台北合影。

  Photo: Lee Ying-chien, Liberty Times
  照片：自由時報記者李盈蒨

  The Web site has so far attracted more than 20,000 followers. Yang says that, just as the Web site’s title “Plain Law Movement” suggests, their presumed readers are members of the public who are not legal professionals, so the authors have to explain abstruse legal knowledge in a more comprehensible manner. They themselves have also learned and gained a lot by running the website, Yang says.

  (Liberty Times, translated by Ethan Zhan)

  

  Literature of law is piled up on a desk on Feb. 6 in an office in Taipei. 二月六日台北的一間辦公室裡，桌上堆疊了幾本法律用書。

  Photo: Ethan Zhan, Taipei Times
  照片：自由時報編譯Ethan Zhan攝

  許多社會事件往往涉及複雜的法律觀念，如台北燈節福祿猴設計師被指抄襲，便是與著作權有關。由東吳等校法研所畢業生成立的《法律白話文運動》粉絲專頁特別從法律的角度切入，以淺白的文字來談論這些備受關注的新聞事件，期盼能提供多元、被人遺漏的觀點。

  《法律白話文運動》於2014年創站，談論許多時事議題，例如課綱微調、頂新案、婚姻平權等。發起人楊貴智說，網站是在三一八學運時期成立的，當時網路瘋傳服貿懶人包，他們發現裡面的資訊不夠精準，特別是國際法的部分，才想到也許可以就他們所學提供社會大眾一些客觀知識。

  網站一開始僅針對服貿作討論，沒想到他們的文章引發網友的興趣。學運結束後，團隊決定繼續經營，探討其他法律議題。執業律師同時也是撰稿人的蔡孟翰說，他們不會告訴讀者「好或不好」，而是用法律的觀點解析與大眾切身相關的議題，然後讓讀者自己判斷。

  網站至今已有二萬多名粉絲。楊貴智表示，正如網站名稱「法律白話文運動」所意味的，他們將網站讀者設定為非法律專業的普羅大眾，而因為要把艱澀的法律知識用易懂的方式表達出來，經營過程中自己也得到很多成長。

  〔自由時報記者李盈蒨〕

  For your information

  TODAY’S WORDS
  今日單字

  1. plagiarism n. 抄襲 (chao1 xi2) 例: Plagiarism is the opposite of creativity. (抄襲是創意的相反。) 2. founder n. 發起人；創始人 (fa1 qi3 ren2; chuang4 shi3 ren2) 例: The founder of this company just got fired from his own firm. (這間公司的創始人最近被他自己的公司開除了。) 3. abstruse adj. 艱澀 (jian1 se4) 例: It takes a great deal of time and effort to decode his abstruse writing. (要讀懂他那艱澀難懂的文字，若非花上格外的時間與心力，實難辦到。)
• Most Popular

  • 1

    Fighter jets bought from the US set to arrive next month

  • 2

    Chinese ships expelled from near Pratas Island

  • 3

    Taiwan to lose 6.67m workers in two retirement waves

  • 4

    S Korean women file forced prostitution lawsuit accusing Washington of abuse

  • 5

    ‘Fujian’ carrier to pose steep defense challenge