Annotated Republic of China Laws

The Laws of the Republic of China (ROC) are passed by the Legislative Yuan and promulgated by the President. The ROC was based in Mainland China from 1912 to 1949. Meanwhile, Taiwan was a Japanese external territory until the Retrocession on 25 October 1945. Then the ROC lost Mainland to the Communists in the Chinese Civil War in 1949 and retreated with its Laws to Taiwan. The ROC Laws may thereafter be informally known as the Laws of Taiwan or Taiwanese Laws.

This book annotates the ROC Laws that tend to be frequently amended. Past versions may remain important in legal processes. To make reading and maintenance simpler, unchanged articles are grouped together per Law and amended articles are shown in separate pages to ease historical comparison. Wikisource accepts translated unchanged Laws, but once any articles are amended, they will be imported here.

Disclaimer
As the ROC officially speaks Mandarin Chinese only, English translations are for informal reference only. In case of formal legal needs, the original traditional Chinese versions shall always prevail. This book does not provide legal advice.

In Taiwan
Article 9 of the Copyright Act in effect in Taiwan:

"The following items shall not be the subject matter of copyright:
 * 1) The constitution, acts, regulations, or official documents.
 * 2) Translations or compilations by central or local government agencies of works

The term "official documents" in the first subparagraph of the preceding paragraph includes proclamations, text of speeches, news releases, and other documents prepared by civil servants in the course of carrying out their duties."

In the USA
The United States Copyright Office considers a law an edict of government and not copyrightable based on earlier judicial case laws.

Caution
However, private translations of laws may be copyright-restricted and thus unacceptable here. This book tries to use governmental translations without copyright restriction as noted. Otherwise, this book may have wiki users' translations under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 License and the GFDL.

Contents
The Ministry of Justice is very inconsistent to prefix or omit the article "the", thus noting ", The" after the following links as in the sources, while left out of the titles of the subpages.