If the Officials Won't Do It, the People Will! 2002 Judges Evaluation Taipei Press Conference

This is the fifth year since the Judicial Reform Foundation (JRF) first published the results of its judge evaluations in 1998. Notably, in 1998, because JRF published a list of judges who failed the evaluation, the then-Chairman and then-Executive Director of the JRF, Attorneys Kao Jui-cheng and Lin Yung-sung, were both privately prosecuted for defamation by Yang Kuei-chih, then-Presiding Judge of the Taiwan High Court. Although the Taiwan Taipei District Court recently (August 13, 2002) dismissed Judge Yang's private prosecution on the grounds that 'the two defendants faithfully disclosed the source, procedure, and sampling scope of the judge evaluation, thereby rendering the credibility and objectivity of the evaluation subject to public comment, and the private prosecutor failed to specifically prove that the two defendants acted with actual malice and intent to fabricate facts to damage his reputation, making it clear that the evidence is insufficient to constitute a crime,' the case concluded because Judge Yang did not file an appeal (Case No.: 88-Zzi-Tzu-No. 208). However, during the proceedings, the two attorneys' application for a constitutional interpretation prompted the Grand Justices of the Judicial Yuan to render Judicial Yuan Interpretation No. 509, providing an important interpretation of the meaning of defamation and the scope of freedom of speech protected by the Constitution. This turned out to be an unexpected harvest and episode in the JRF's years of conducting judge evaluations.

Upholding its consistent philosophy of promoting judicial reform, the Judicial Reform Foundation continues to conduct judge evaluations this year, featuring several unprecedented initiatives as described below:

I. Characteristics of This Year's Evaluation

1. Unprecedented Scale

   This year, the JRF collaborated for the first time with bar associations across six regions (Taipei, Taoyuan, Hsinchu, Miaoli, Taichung, and Kaohsiung). The evaluation covered 847 judges across 11 courts: the Taipei, Shihlin, Panchiao, Taoyuan, Hsinchu, Miaoli, Taichung, and Kaohsiung District Courts, as well as the Taiwan High Court, Taichung Branch Court, and Kaohsiung Branch Court. In addition, a total of 902 lawyers across Taiwan participated, yielding 12,520 evaluation entries, with as many as 438 judges eligible for public release. The scale is truly unprecedented.

2. Adoption of a Grading Scale for Courtroom Demeanor and Judgment Quality

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   To avoid past difficulties in interpreting evaluation results (e.g., should a "good" judge be benchmarked at 50, 60, 70, or even 80 points? Is there truly statistical significance between a judge scoring 85 points and one scoring 84 or 83 points?), this year's evaluation specifically required lawyers to grade judges' courtroom demeanor and judgment quality using a five-tier scale: A: Very satisfied, worthy of emulation (5 points); B: Satisfied, conscientious and responsible (4 points); C: Fair, room for improvement (3 points); D: Dissatisfied, barely tolerable (2 points); E: Very poor, needs to be replaced (1 point). Because each tier (A, B, C, D, E, corresponding to 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1 point) carries distinct verbal meanings, readers can more easily interpret the implications behind a judge's average score.

3. Simultaneous Press Conferences Held by Six Regional Bar Associations to Announce Evaluation Results

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   Although the JRF was responsible for coordinating administrative and statistical work this year, the evaluation results for judges in various regional courts were simultaneously released today (November 13, 2002) at 10:00 a.m. by the six major bar associations of Taipei, Taoyuan, Hsinchu, Miaoli, Taichung, and Kaohsiung through press conferences held across six regions in northern, central, and southern Taiwan. Taking the Taipei regional press conference as an example, it released detailed evaluation results for judges from the Taipei, Shihlin, and Panchiao District Courts and the Taiwan High Court, as well as the evaluation metrics for judges in the evaluated courts. For the complete evaluation data of regional courts, please consult the contents independently published by each respective bar association.

II. Comparison of This Year's Evaluation Results

1. For the civil division, judges from eleven courts—the Taipei, Shihlin, Panchiao, Taoyuan, Hsinchu, Miaoli, Taichung, and Kaohsiung District Courts, the Taiwan High Court (hereinafter High Court), the Taichung Branch Court (hereinafter Taichung Branch), and the Kaohsiung Branch Court (hereinafter Kaohsiung Branch)—were ranked. For the criminal division, excluding the Shihlin District Court and Kaohsiung Branch Court where the number of judges eligible for public release was too small to be included in the ranking, judges from the remaining nine courts were ranked, identifying the top three and bottom three in each category. However, because the trustworthiness of judges in Kaohsiung area courts (including the civil and criminal divisions of the Kaohsiung District Court and Kaohsiung Branch Court) was not to be published, they were excluded from the ranking (see table below).

   Division	Rank	Court	Courtroom Demeanor Average Score	Rank	Court	Judgment Quality Average Score	Rank	Court	Trustworthiness Average Percentage
   Criminal Division	1	Taichung Criminal	4.17	1	Hsinchu Criminal	4.19	1	Hsinchu Criminal	89.92%
   	2	Hsinchu Criminal	4.10	2	Taichung Criminal	4.00	2	Miaoli Criminal	76.44%
   	3	Taichung Branch Criminal	4.03	3	Taoyuan Criminal	3.93	3	Taipei Criminal	73.62%
   	7	Taipei Criminal	3.92	7	Taipei Criminal	3.86	6	Taichung Criminal	70.79%
   	8	Miaoli Criminal	3.91	8	High Court Criminal	3.73	7	Taichung Branch Criminal	66.73%
   	9	High Court Criminal	3.85	9	Miaoli Criminal	3.71	8	High Court Criminal	56.94%
   Civil Division	1	Hsinchu Civil	4.24	1	Hsinchu Civil	4.15	1	Hsinchu Civil	84.97%
   	2	Taichung Civil	4.09	2	Taichung Civil	3.94	2	Shihlin Civil	73.76%
   	3	Taichung Branch Civil	4.09	3	Taichung Branch Civil	3.94	3	Taoyuan Civil	72.81%
   	9	Panchiao Civil	3.93	9	High Court Civil	3.74	7	Taichung Branch Civil	61.38%
   	10	Taoyuan Civil	3.70	10	Miaoli Civil	3.70	8	High Court Civil	61.21%
   	11	Miaoli Civil	3.56	11	Taoyuan Civil	3.61	9	Panchiao Civil	60.26%

2. Among the eleven evaluated courts, excluding the Shihlin District Court Criminal Division (due to too few judges eligible for publication) and the Kaohsiung Bar Association's decision not to publish the trustworthiness of Kaohsiung area judges, the names of judges belonging to the groups with the highest and lowest scores across courtroom demeanor, judgment quality, and professional ethics/integrity (expressed as trustworthiness) for each respective court are hereby published. If a court had no judges simultaneously falling into the highest or lowest score groups across all three evaluation categories, that section for the court is left blank; if a court had two or more judges simultaneously falling into the highest or lowest score groups across all three categories, the judges are listed in order of the stroke count of their surnames (see table below).

   	Court	Judge's Name	Courtroom Demeanor Group	Judgment Quality Group	Trustworthiness
   Judges in the Top Three Categories Group	Taipei Criminal	Chang Hsiao-ch'i	4.5~5 pts	4~4.5 pts	≧80%
   	Taipei Civil	Lin Hung-ta	4~4.5 pts	4~4.5 pts
   	Taipei Civil	Hsu Ch'un-fang	4~4.5 pts	4~4.5 pts
   	Taipei Civil	Ch'en Hsiu-chen	4~4.5 pts	4~4.5 pts
   	Taipei Civil	Weng Chao-jung	4~4.5 pts	4~4.5 pts
   	Taipei Civil	Chang Ching-wen	4~4.5 pts	4~4.5 pts
   	Shihlin Civil	Hung Mu-fang	4~4.5 pts	4~4.5 pts
   	Shihlin Civil	Chang Kuo-hsun	4~4.5 pts	4~4.5 pts
   	Panchiao Civil	Tai Chia-ching	4~4.5 pts	4~4.5 pts
   	Miaoli Civil	Kao Min-li	4~4.5 pts	4~4.5 pts
   	Taoyuan Civil	Lin Shu-feng	4~4.5 pts	3.5~4 pts
   	Hsinchu Criminal	Su Chia-feng	4.5~5 pts	4~4.5 pts
   	High Court Criminal	Lin Ch'in-kang	4.5~5 pts	4~4.5 pts
   	High Court Civil	Liang Yu-fen	4.5~5 pts	4~4.5 pts
   	Taichung Branch Criminal	Hu Chung-wen	4.5~5 pts	4.5~5 pts
   	Taichung Branch Criminal	Ch'en Hsien-hui	4.5~5 pts	4.5~5 pts
   	Taichung Branch Civil	Weng Fang-ching	4.5~5 pts	4~4.5 pts
   Judges in the Bottom Three Categories Group	Taipei Criminal	Hou Shui-shen	3~3.5 pts	3~3.5 pts	<50%
   	Taipei Criminal	Chung Hua	3~3.5 pts	3~3.5 pts
   	Panchiao Criminal	Li Chao-jung	3~3.5 pts	3~3.5 pts
   	Miaoli Criminal	Lin Chih-ch'eng	2.5~3 pts	2.5~3 pts
   	High Court Criminal	Ch'en Ping-chang	2.5~3 pts	3~3.5 pts
   	High Court Civil	Lan Wen-hsiang	3~3.5 pts	2.5~3 pts

III. Significance Reflected by This Year's Evaluation Results

1. There remains substantial room for improvement in judges' courtroom demeanor and judgment quality across courts: As shown in the results of Table 1, regarding courtroom demeanor and judgment quality, not only are there numerous evaluated judges rated by lawyers as satisfied, conscientious, and responsible (meaning the average score for judges in those courts exceeded 4 points), but even for judges in the lower-ranking courts, their reviews fall between "satisfied, conscientious, and responsible" and "fair, room for improvement" (the average scores for judges in the bottom three courts ranged between 3.93 and 3.56 points). This demonstrates that, overall, judges' performance in these two areas is above standard. Furthermore, given that the difference in average scores between the best- and worst-performing court judges is less than 1 point, it is clear that while the average performance of judges across courts in courtroom demeanor and judgment quality does not vary greatly, there is still significant room for improvement.
2. Wide disparity in trustworthiness among judges across courts: As shown in Table 1, regarding trustworthiness, the gap between the most and least trusted court judges in both civil and criminal divisions reaches as high as roughly 33%, which is a staggering figure! Moreover, the overall average trustworthiness of judges across the eleven evaluated courts was only 69.20%, falling short of 70%. Judicial authorities and judges must redouble their efforts to build a judiciary worthy of public trust.
3. Hsinchu District Court judges can be considered the overall champions of this year's evaluation: As shown in Table 1, except for losing to the Taichung District Court Criminal Division by a slim margin of 0.07 points, Hsinchu District Court judges captured the top spots in all other evaluation categories, leaving a deep impression. While this may be partly attributed to the small number of Hsinchu District Court judges eligible for publication (12 in the criminal division, 6 in the civil division), nevertheless, the average trustworthiness of Hsinchu District Court's civil and criminal division judges reached 84.97% and 89.92% respectively, making them the only two units in this evaluation to exceed 80%. Their performance is therefore well commendable.
4. Drastic disparities in the quality of individual judges mean litigants must also rely on luck when going to court: As shown in the results of Table 2, among the 438 judges eligible for publication this year, only 17 judges simultaneously fell into the top score groups for all three categories of courtroom demeanor, judgment quality, and trustworthiness within their respective courts. This shows that playing the role of a judge exceptionally well across the board is no easy task for ordinary judges. Similarly, it is equally difficult to simultaneously fall into the bottom three score groups across all three categories in their respective courts. In particular, several of these 6 judges have languished at the bottom of the JRF judge evaluation lists year after year, raising serious questions as to whether the functions of judicial autonomy and self-regulation have failed, and whether litigants going to court must simply leave their fate to fortune!

IV. Future Demands

1. Expand the scope of legal professional evaluation: Although the JRF's judge evaluation is entering its fifth year, we have never been satisfied with the status quo. We believe the scope of evaluation should promptly be expanded to judges across all courts nationwide (including summary courts and execution offices). Furthermore, lawyers and prosecutors should not place themselves outside the process of judicial reform. Therefore, the JRF also pioneered efforts on October 1st this year by jointly holding a lawyer evaluation for the Hsinchu region with the Hsinchu District Court and Hsinchu Bar Association. However, it is regrettable that the JRF has repeatedly appealed to the Ministry of Justice to conduct general prosecutor evaluations independently or provide data for private organizations to do so, yet the Ministry of Justice has ignored these calls for years. In fact, the recent frequent occurrence of prosecutorial disciplinary cases amply demonstrates that relying solely on judicial personnel's self-discipline or internal supervision is clearly insufficient. Therefore, establishing a mechanism for "public opinion oversight" and expanding the scope of legal professional evaluations are truly urgent tasks.
2. Establish a mechanism to weed out incompetent judges: For years, the JRF's continued conduct of judge evaluations has served as the foundation for protecting good judges and weeding out incompetent ones. However, after five years of evaluations, we often find that judges lingering at the bottom of the list year after year repeat their positions without seeking improvement. Therefore, the JRF hereby solemnly calls on the Judicial Yuan to promptly promote the legislation of the Judges Act, and even introduce the concept of public review, allowing the masters of the country—the people—to evaluate judges engaged in adjudication, while establishing appropriate mechanisms to weed out incompetent judges. Only in this way can the overall judicial environment be elevated, and the achievements of years of judicial reform protected from erosion.