10 Secrets of the "National Judicial Reform Movement" You Must Know—Revealed All at Once!

The public's dissatisfaction with the judiciary continues to hit rock bottom, signaling that a critical moment for judicial reform has arrived. Following the regime change, the "National Judicial Reform Conference"—with the President personally serving as the convener—has been deemed a silver bullet to restore judicial trust. However, up to now, the official authorities seem to have no concrete vision of how the National Judicial Reform Conference should be conducted.

In fact, since May, JRF has already been holding practical simulations of the conference, accumulating a wealth of experience in the process, as well as a great deal of negative energy. Now, we are sharing 10 invaluable insights from the "National Judicial Reform Movement" with you~

• NO.1 Must a meeting be live-streamed in high quality?

  In the era of social networking, anyone with a mobile phone can live-stream, making it arguably the most eye-catching promotional method, and the National Judicial Reform Conference is no exception. A high-quality live stream requires dispatching numerous staff members and professional filming equipment, which, for a non-profit organization like JRF, comes at a hefty price. However, through live streaming, judicial issues can be communicated faster and more widely. Since every participant's remarks and opinions can be subjected to public and immediate scrutiny, concerns such as backroom dealings and interest exchanges can also be averted. Usually, only live streams with clear video quality, uninterrupted connections, and even simultaneous dialogue display can attract sustained audience attention and spark discussions. Therefore, high-quality live streaming is indispensable!

• NO.2 Plain-Language Movement for Meeting Materials!

  Publishing meeting materials prior to the conference facilitates the convergence of diverse opinions, allowing participants and the online public to provide us with their valuable insights before the meeting even begins. As a result, the agenda and reference materials must be published one week prior to the meeting. However, for JRF, which has perennially strained manpower, internal meeting materials are usually produced with narrow escapes just a few days or even the same day before the meeting. Finalizing them a week in advance is truly a major challenge. What is even harder is that the materials we release "must be understandable to everyone," and must never feature legalistic jargon beloved by lawyers such as "it cannot be said that this lacks necessity." It could be said that we reformed our own habitual writing style first. Fortunately, sincerity moves the heavens, and the materials were published on schedule, proving that there is no such thing as a belated JRF, there is only whether one wants to do it or not—nothing is ever too late.

• NO.3 The Missing Stakeholders!

  At the inception of the National Judicial Reform Movement, we naively set out to have stakeholders present when analyzing judicial issues and formulating solutions—for example, legal practitioners such as judges, prosecutors, and court clerks. With them present, realistic considerations could be raised for each proposal, or alternative countermeasures could be offered. However, because practitioners held "pluralistic" imaginations about us, despite sending out numerous invitations, some invited judges and prosecutors privately declined our invitations, stating: "Although I'd love to participate, I really don't want to get blacklisted." Never mind! After our persistent lobbying, the movement's mission ultimately won the recognition of some practitioners, who participated and offered their input. If this movement achieves even a modicum of success, we must thank all participants for their enthusiastic assistance!There are simply too many people to thank—let's just thank the heavens!

• NO.4 The Elusive Non-Lawyers!

  The Judicial Reform Conference must include the participation of non-lawyers so that the public's authentic voices on the judiciary can truly enter the judicial reform conference. We designed a meeting composition model where "non-lawyers make up the majority" to prevent the meeting from being dominated by lawyers. There may be 22 million non-lawyers in Taiwan; finding a few to participate in the meeting—how hard could that be? Yet, when JRF actually invited non-lawyers to participate, we frequently received responses such as "I don't understand the law and feel I can't help" or "I feel the judiciary has nothing to do with me." This forced us to rack our brains during the invitation process and repeatedly explain the importance of non-lawyer participation in the meeting. Facts have proven that non-lawyer participation in the meeting allowed us to see a completely different horizon from the past, and after participating, non-lawyers also gained a deeper understanding of the judiciary.

• NO.5 Problem Analysis and Solutions That Accidentally Exploded

  A raised judicial issue may involve causes across many dimensions, and different causes may have different solutions. The 10 judicial issues originally scheduled to be voted on all required careful analysis and solution setting. However, after the analysis was completed, we discovered that a single judicial issue is intricate and complex. For example, the judicial issue voted number one by netizens—"Improper reporting during investigation causing trial by media"—encompassed causes such as the current special media ecology, improper leakage of investigative information by judicial personnel, and a lack of official clarification mechanisms, among others. Meanwhile, solutions could include: placing warning labels on reports, drawing clear boundaries between public and non-public information, and requiring the judiciary to communicate with the public in plain language, etc. The analyses and solutions were countless and the workload was simply too massive. JRF could only select a few judicial issues within limited time and manpower to design solutions first; other issues had to be temporarily set aside and addressed later when we have more capacity. It really feels such a pity.

• NO.6 Inability to Curb an Infinite Love for Mind Maps (?)

  After we analyzed the 10 judicial issues, given the multitude of topics involved, we decided to create mind maps structured around an easy-to-understand analysis report to facilitate a bird's-eye view of the issue framework. However, as the problems were analyzed in greater detail and the breadth of involved dimensions expanded, resulting in the firing of blanket shots (broad, sweeping criticism), the mind maps expanded infinitely. In the end, we had to piece together several A4 sheets of paper to fully present the mind map of a single issue. But because there were many participants and we were constrained by a lack of sufficient labor for massive manual assembly, we eventually decided to become best friends with large-format printing.

• NO.7 Are You Majoring in Online Participation?

  The online world is crouching tigers and hidden dragons; you might encounter participants even more professional than yourself at any time. JRF hoped that during the meeting process, any netizens who were interested in the topics and had provided valuable suggestions could come and participate in the meeting. Therefore, we selected and invited several netizens from the open discussion forum prior to the meeting. During a certain meeting, a netizen came, and after his self-introduction, ladies and gentlemen! We discovered that he was actually a judge, bringing the professional observations of judges regarding judicial reform to us from a practical perspective during the meeting.

• NO.8 As an Editor, Isn't It Normal to Respond to Questions at Any All Times?

  During the problem-gathering stage, enthusiastically engaged netizens always have all sorts of wild observations about the current judicial status. As a professional editor, patiently synthesizing and responding to massive and out-of-control issues is a must—for example: "Blundering judgments harm people deeply!" or "I feel our judiciary is always sleeping." How to transform such subjective ideas into actual judicial issues tests an editor's wisdom. Sometimes, for just a few short sentences from a commenter, the editor spends hours studying judgments and clarifying facts together with the netizen. It really takes a lot of energy!

• NO.9 Verbatim Transcripts Are Wonderful Things; I Wish Everyone Had One!

  If meetings generate adequate verbatim transcripts, the discussion process can withstand external scrutiny, and the meeting contents or famous quotes will easily be circulated and cited in the future. But! Each meeting easily lasts over 3 hours, and the number of participants approaches nearly 15 people per session; the volume of verbatim transcripts produced is truly considerable. As if being numerous wasn't enough, they also had to be released before the next meeting so that participants could preview the progress of previous meetings beforehand. Fortunately, JRF had a group of enthusiastic volunteers assisting to tirelessly re-listen and re-listen, proofreading time and time again, so that the exquisite verbatim transcripts could be published on the website on schedule.

• NO.10 Keyboard Power Netizens

  During the meeting, in addition to live video streaming, there was also a professional keyboardist doing text broadcasting, typing at a rate of 200 words per minute to instantly present the contents of the meeting discussions in the chatroom. This allowed netizens to understand the current status in real-time, participate in discussions, and even directly ask questions to participants and receive responses. Expanding meeting participation while also practicing the concept of legal education, open meetings and real-time interaction are the prime paradigm of keyboard participation.

Thank you to everyone who was tricked into clicking by the title for patiently reading JRF's experience talk. Our "National Judicial Reform Movement" is not yet over; next up, we will conduct research into solutions for judicial problems. At the same time, our monitoring of the government-held "National Judicial Reform Conference" will not cease. Besides public transparency being the most basic requirement of the conference, public opinion gathering must be done more thoroughly and meticulously, and more diverse experts must be recruited to participate in problem analysis. When formulating solutions, we must also be able to eliminate the limitations inherent in the momentum of civil society organizations. Only critics are the true buyers; we hope the government can do even better than JRF!

Overview of National Judicial Reform Movement Tasks

Time	Task Item
5/4	National Judicial Reform Movement Kickoff Press Conference: Reforming the Judiciary Begins with Asking the Right Questions
5/4	Website Problem Gathering Begins
5/13	Bicycle Courier - Island-wide Problem Gathering Begins
5/13	Island-wide Press Conference (Taoyuan District Court, Hsinchu District Court)
5/13	Island-wide Forum: Death Row for 10,151 Days (Hsinchu City God Temple Entrance)
5/14	Island-wide Press Conference: Oppose Wind Turbines, Also Oppose the Judiciary Meddling in Politically Motivated Cases (Miaoli District Court)
5/15	Island-wide Press Conference: A Sentence I Have for the Judiciary (Taichung District Court, Taichung County Government)
5/15	Island-wide Forum: Hometown, Judiciary, and Poetry
5/16	Island-wide Forum: Innocent People Sentenced Guilty
5/17	Island-wide Press Conference: Those Families Hustling on the Road to Vindication (Chiayi District Court)
5/17	Island-wide Forum: Legal Professionals on a Tightrope
5/18	Island-wide Press Conference: Pursuing a Fair Trial Based on Conscience! (Kaohsiung District Court)
5/19	Island-wide Press Conference: Out-of-Control Land, Out-of-Control Judiciary (Pingtung District Court)
5/20	Website Problem Gathering Ends
5/20	Island-wide Forum: Hsiu Tzu-ch'i's Exercise Problem
5/22	Island-wide Press Conference (Hualien District Court)
5/23	Island-wide Press Conference: Unspoken Opinions, Judicial Reform Listens First! (Yilan District Court)
5/23	Island-wide Forum: A Great Attorney Who Isn't a Law Major
5/24	Island-wide Press Conference: Do Not Forget Those Still Suffering in Miscarriages of Justice! (Keelung District Court)
5/24	Island-wide Forum: Judicial Reform Face-to-Face
5/25	Bicycle Courier - Island-wide Problem Gathering Ends
5/25	Press Conference: Delivering Island-wide Judicial Reform Opinions to the Presidential Office (Judicial Yuan)
5/27	Island-wide Forum: Room 303 of the Legendary Taichung District Court
6/14	First Session of Second-Stage Preparatory Meeting
6/21	Second Session of Second-Stage Preparatory Meeting
6/28	Third Session of Second-Stage Preparatory Meeting
7/2	First Session of First-Stage Evaluation Meeting
7/9	Second Session of Second-Stage Evaluation Meeting
7/15	Second-Stage Press Conference: Openness, Transparency, and Sincere Dialogue Are the Keys to Judicial Trust (Legislative Yuan)
8/25	Third-Stage Secretariat Preparatory Meeting
8/28	Forum: Judicial Personnel Overwork and Adjudication Quality
9/8	Third-Stage Secretariat Preparatory Meeting
9/11	Forum: The Relationship Between Media and the Judiciary
9/19	Third-Stage Secretariat Preparatory Meeting
9/26	First Session of Third-Stage Preparatory Meeting