The Graduate Institute of Law at National Chung Cheng University was founded in 1992. The Department of Law was established one year later. The main goal of both the Graduate Institute and the Department is to enhance the quality of legal research and legal education in southern Taiwan. The major research fields in the Graduate Institute and Department include civil law, criminal law, commercial law, business law, labor law, social law, and administrative law. In order to train a variety of legal professionals, in 1999 the Department of Law was divided into three different Programs – Comparative Law, Financial and Economic Law, and Legal Institutions. In the same year, the Graduate Institute founded the E.LL.M. Program (Executive Master of Law) for the purpose of combining legal research and legal practice, providing opportunities for advanced legal study to people working in various fields. The Graduate Institute of Financial and Economic Law was instituted in 2000, with the aim of promoting academic research in those fields. In the same year, the Department of Law established a doctoral program. In 2002, the Program in Financial and Economic Law and the Graduate Institute of Financial and Economic Law were merged into an independent unit.