Attorney Representatives, Age Is an Issue: Generational Justice in the National Consultative Conference on Judicial Reform

With the Office of the President about to convene the National Consultative Conference on Judicial Reform, the preparatory committee has planned five subgroups, each with 15 attendees, two of whom are attorneys. One is elected by the Taiwan Bar Association through a postal ballot, and the other is nominated by the preparatory committee. The bar association is currently holding a postal vote, with various local bar associations recommending 13 candidates, from which the five with the highest votes will be selected as representatives. For a time, local bar associations have been issuing letters asking members to support their recommended candidates, and a heavyweight figure in central Taiwan has even mobilized vote allocation, making it quite lively!

A closer look at this election of attorney representatives reveals that even the youngest candidate is already 48 years old! Perhaps judicial reform requires a certain level of seniority and prestige to engage in dialogue? However, looking back at the list of 20 attorney representatives at the 1999 National Judicial Reform Conference, and comparing it with the search results from the Ministry of Justice's attorney management system, we can see that the youngest representative back then was 36 years old, with six under 40, two aged 41, one aged 45, and two aged 50. In other words, more than half of the representatives were under 50. Back then, reform pinned its hopes on the young and energetic. In the blink of an eye, 18 years have flown by, and now the attorney representatives who rely on seniority and ranking to talk about judicial reform with the President have grown much older with time...

Although it is said that reform is about knowledge, willpower, and character, and has nothing to do with age or generation, looking back at the elections for attorney representatives to the Judges Selection Committee, Judges Evaluation Committee, and Prosecutors Evaluation Committee in recent years, the candidates are exclusively from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s generations. Even those from the early 1980s generation (the most senior of whom is now 46 years old) have consistently failed to make it onto the candidate list. Isn't this an issue in terms of generational justice?

Now, we can only hope that the five attorney representatives additionally nominated by the preparatory committee will be practicing attorneys under the age of 50. Moreover, since this National Consultative Conference on Judicial Reform emphasizes being distinct from past domination by legal professionals, perhaps there is no need to impose restrictions on years of legal practice, as long as they possess representativeness as younger attorneys on issues of judicial reform.