在法學與國家法中看見原住民族法律

Taking Note of Indigenous Peoples’ Laws in Legal Science and State Law

若將「法律」定義為社會規範中，某些可透過該社會所共同承認的權威機關的強制力，加以貫徹執行的規範，則如同漢族之有傳統中國法，臺灣原住民族亦有其自己的法律，亦即「原住民法」。

Like ethnic Chinese who have traditional Chinese law, indigenous peoples have their own laws, if law has been defined as a social norm that should be enforced by the authority recognized by a given society. Plains indigenous peoples lost their own legal traditions due to their being ruled by the Ch’ing Dynasty for 212 years and assimilated by the ethnic Chinese in Taiwan. In contrast, mountain indigenous peoples, who were not governed by foreign rulers until Japan acquired the sov-ereignty of Taiwan in the late nineteenth century, kept their own legal concepts for a longer period of time. The Japanese authorities in coloni-al Taiwan, however, did not follow the principle of “rule by law” when they dealt with the legal affairs of the mountain indigenous peoples.