JRF Statement on the Legislative Progress of the Draft Judges Act

Tomorrow is the final day of the current legislative session of the Legislative Yuan, and the ruling and opposition parties have agreed to hold consultations on the highly anticipated Judges Act at 10:00 tomorrow morning. Regarding the currently known contents of these consultations, our Foundation solemnly declares its stance of unacceptability. We urge both the ruling and opposition parties not to hastily and carelessly pass a Judges Act that fails to protect the people. The failure to complete legislation in this session should be entirely attributed to the Judicial Yuan's conservative stance of protecting its own institutional interests, and it deserves the strongest condemnation from the entire public.

We demand that the Judges Act must not become a "Judges' Insurance Act." The currently negotiated draft of the Judges Act deviates from the public's stance because:

1. It prohibits citizens from directly filing complaints against problematic judges, rendering individual case evaluations ineffective.
2. The Disciplinary Court, which governs judicial discipline, is composed entirely of career judges, continuing the practice of officials protecting one another.
3. Comprehensive evaluations are reduced to black-box assessments conducted by the Judicial Yuan itself, taking place only once every three years, with the evaluation results kept confidential.
4. The Evaluation Committee remains subordinate to the Judicial Yuan, lacking objective neutrality and failing to serve its evaluation function.
5. It refuses to reform the judicial examination system, allowing out-of-touch "dinosaur judges" to continuously reproduce through exams.

Media Contact

Attorney Lin Feng-cheng, Executive Director, Judicial Reform Foundation 02-2523-1178