Description of Event
In this seminar, I critically compare the criminalization of fraudulent sex (i.e., use of deception to obtain sexual acts) in China, Hong Kong, India, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand. Through highlighting 1) the determined judicial interpretation to expand rape provisions silent on fraudulent sex to include certain types of fraudulent sex, and, 2) the highly selective enforcement of statutory provisions that cover all forms of fraudulent sex to only certain types of fraudulent sex, I argue that sexual autonomy protection is not the key driver behind fraudulent sex criminalization in the surveyed jurisdictions. Rather, the relevant sexual offence provisions are essentially employed to police distinct types of false representation. The implications are both analytical (i.e., understand the current tensions between theories and rhetoric of sexual autonomy protection and actual legal practices) and, possibly, normative (i.e., many fraudulent sex should be punished as fraud and/or violations of professional ethics, rather than sexual offence). More broadly, this comparative case study highlights the stark disconnects between express statutory language and the law in practice, and the fluid evolution and adaption of transplanted legal system in Asia.
This Faculty Colloquium is generously funded by the Walter S. Owen Chair in Law.
Please contact burchill@allard.ubc.ca for the Zoom link.
Speaker
Jianlin Chen is Professor and Associate Dean (International) at Melbourne Law School. He grew up in Singapore and Taiwan. He obtained his LLB from National University of Singapore, and his LLM and JSD from the University of Chicago. He is qualified to practice in Singapore and New York. He joined the Melbourne Law School in 2017 after starting his academic career at the University of Hong Kong in 2011.
His current primary research interests are law & religion and criminal law, with a particular focus on fraud (e.g., religious fraud regulation, fraudulent sex criminalization) and through a combination of comparative perspectives and economic analysis. Together with other research projects that traverse diverse subject matters (e.g., natural resources, property, corporate & securities, government procurement, culture war, charity, tax), his underlying research agenda is to develop an overarching theoretical inquiry that 1) explores how the different forms of state actions—ranging from law, regulation, tax, state ownership, public contract, government speech—have surprisingly similar capacity and propensity (or the lack thereof) to achieve public interest objectives; and 2) critically evaluates the prevailing approach of prescribing distinct legal constraints and normative considerations for each category of state actions.
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