CIEL Deputy Director Professor Chao-Hung Chen has recently published his article, “Regulating Consumer Contracts with Government-Made Templates: An Examination of Taiwan’s Approach to Boilerplate Forms,” in the Asian Journal of Comparative Law. The study examines Taiwan’s practice of issuing government-issued standard contractual templates to regulate business conducts and reassesses the boundary between private autonomy and public regulatory intervention from comparative law and law-and-policy perspectives. The article explores how contractual templates function as a regulatory instrument guiding market participants toward stronger consumer protection, offering an innovative Taiwanese perspective to the global comparative law community.

🔹 A Top-Down Regulatory Approach: Templates as Administrative Guidance

Unlike jurisdictions where contractual templates emerge through industry associations, Taiwan adopts a top-down approach in which government agencies issue standard form contractual templates to harmonise industry practices and balance the rights and obligations between businesses and consumers. Although most templates lack formal binding legal force and operate primarily as administrative guidance, they demonstrate considerable “stickiness” in practice and serve as influential benchmarks for contract drafting.

🔹 Case Study in Payment Services: Effectiveness and Strategic Adaptation

Drawing on a comparative case study of electronic payment institutions and third-party payment service providers, the research finds that firms largely adhere to government-issued templates even when adoption is not legally mandatory. This suggests that templates function as quasi-regulatory instruments in practice. At the same time, businesses strategically adjust specific provisions within the template framework to preserve operational flexibility and align contractual terms with commercial interests.

🔹 From Administrative Guidance to Quasi-Regulatory Norms

The study further observes that, while Taiwan’s Consumer Protection Act expressly authorises regulators to issue mandatory and prohibitory clauses, the legal status and effects of contractual templates remain partly ambiguous. As government-issued templates become widely adopted and exert substantive regulatory influence, greater transparency and procedural legitimacy in their formulation will be essential to strengthen their normative authority in regulating unfair contract terms.

Overall, the article traces the evolution of nearly one hundred contractual templates issued in Taiwan over the past two decades and demonstrates how governments may employ contractual design as a regulatory “nudge” to promote consumer-friendly market practices in the digital economy.

CIEL will continue advancing interdisciplinary research at the intersection of technology law, financial regulation, and private law, enhancing the international visibility and impact of Taiwanese legal scholarship through global academic engagement.

📖 Full article: https://doi.org/10.1017/asjcl.2025.10009