John Ching Hsiung Wu

John C. H. Wu was a Chinese jurist and author, who was born into a family of officials and received a classical education. He graduated from the University of Michigan Law School, and was the principal author of the constitution of the Republic of China. He maintained a correspondence with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. and later produced scholarly work examining Holmes' legal thought. Previously a Methodist, he converted to Roman Catholicism after reading Thérèse of Lisieux's biography. He served as an adviser in the Chinese delegation to the 1945 United Nations Conference on International Organization in San Francisco and served as the Chinese ambassador to the Vatican in 1947-49. In 1957, he was appointed a judge of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague. After the Chinese Communist Revolution, he worked as a professor at the Seton Hall University School of Law in New Jersey until retiring to Taiwan in 1967. He wrote works in Chinese, English, French, and German on Christian spirituality, Chinese literature (including a translation of the Tao Te Ching) and on legal topics. On his Tao Te Ching translation, Thomas Merton said Wu's work was "absolutely necessary for us not only to progress but even to survive." He died of natural causes in New Jersey on 6 February 1986, at the age of 86. He was posthumously awarded the Order of the Republic, the highest state honor in China.