Top 10 Judicial Reform Milestones

Which events can serve as milestones for judicial reform?

What events have pushed Taiwan's judiciary forward step by step?

We have selected the "Top 10 Taiwan Judicial Reform Milestones" to retrace the course of reform together.

Establishment of the "Judicial Reform Foundation"

"Establishing a judiciary worthy of public trust" was the central goal of the JRF when it was founded in 1995. From improving judges' attitudes in the courtroom and punctuality in opening court sessions, to revising trial procedures centered on the adversarial principle, and implementing legal aid for ordinary citizens, the JRF is widely recognized for bringing the judiciary down from its lofty, inscrutable pedestal to a position that the public can anticipate and approach.

Court Observation

For a long time, the public's impression of courts was to avoid them whenever possible. The courtroom was like a judge's kingdom, where litigants had to endure the grievance of not being respected by the judiciary. When the JRF was in its preparatory stage, it decided to launch court observation activities, hoping to empirically publicize instances where judges showed disrespect to litigants in court, thereby monitoring judges. Starting with the first court observation on August 1, 1995, the JRF submitted court observation reports for six consecutive years, causing a public uproar and gradually improving judges' attitudes toward trying cases.

The October 19 "March for the Resurrection of Justice" Demonstration

In 1997, lawyers, scholars, laborers, women, people with disabilities, and other public interest groups jointly formed the "All-People Judicial Reform Alliance." On October 19 of the same year, they held the "March for the Resurrection of Justice" demonstration to reflect Taiwanese society's strong demand and aspiration for judicial reform. The demands of the march were anti-corruption, anti-privilege, anti-discrimination, anti-hastiness, as well as making the judiciary civilianized, humanized, socialized, and professionalized. This was not only the first time Taiwanese legal professionals took to the streets, but it also became a clarion call to awaken Taiwanese society.

Judicial Evaluation

In 1998, the JRF released the results of judicial evaluations for the first time. This was not the first time judicial evaluations had been conducted in judicial history, but it was the first time a civil society organization publicly named failing judges. Aside from causing a shock across all sectors, this act led to the JRF's chairman and executive director at the time being named as defendants in a private prosecution for defamation. The three-year litigation indirectly prompted J.Y. Interpretation No. 509, taking a major step forward in the protection of freedom of speech, and ultimately concluded with the Taipei District Court dismissing the case. This initial performance generated a massive response, prompting the JRF to strengthen its resolve in monitoring and to continue conducting related supervisory and evaluation work every year thereafter.

Convening of the "National Judicial Reform Conference"

Convened in July 1999, the National Judicial Reform Conference was a comprehensive checkup of our nation's judicial system. Conclusions reached at the conference included expediting the passage of amendments to the Judicial Yuan Organization Act, resolving case backlogs, enhancing the quality of judgments, weeding out unfit judicial personnel (including judges, prosecutors, and police/investigative personnel), and implementing a legal aid system for underprivileged citizens. These not only reflected the trend of public opinion in our country but also represented the most pressing judicial issues of the moment. The resolutions made at the conference that year became the blueprint for the judicial reform currently being carried out by the authorities.

Constitutionalization of Judicial Budgetary Independence

The basic principle of the separation of powers in democratic countries is to make the executive, legislative, and judicial branches independent and mutually checks-and-balancing, with no single branch overriding another. However, under our nation's traditional system for reviewing the Judicial Yuan's budget, the Judicial Yuan would first compile a preliminary budget estimate and submit it to the Executive Yuan for final determination, before forwarding it to the Legislative Yuan for review. Such a practice was equivalent to allowing the executive branch to control the judicial branch, and the judicial budget was easily sacrificed, severely impacting judicial independence and the functions of the judicial power. Through the efforts of numerous civil society groups, when the National Assembly amended the Constitution in 1999, it finally passed the constitutionalization of judicial budget independence. Article 5 of the Additional Articles of the Constitution explicitly stipulates: "The Executive Yuan shall not cut the annual judicial budget estimates submitted by the Judicial Yuan, but may attach opinions and incorporate them into the central government general budget for submission to the Legislative Yuan for deliberation." The constitutionalization of judicial budgetary independence is a prerequisite for enhancing judicial quality and an important cornerstone of judicial independence.

Grand Justices Evaluation

To supervise the nomination and consent-granting process for the fifteen Grand Justices of the Judicial Yuan (including the President and Vice President) in 2003, six civil society groups—including the Judicial Reform Foundation, the Taiwan Association for Human Rights, the Taiwan Law Society, the Judicial Reform Foundation, the Taiwan Bar Association (TWBA), and the Taipei Bar Association—first formed the "Alliance for Civilian Supervision of Judicial Yuan Grand Justices (Including President and Vice President) Nominees." From late 2002 to mid-September 2003, they operated intensively through methods such as visiting the president, submitting concrete suggestions, conducting questionnaire surveys of professional communities, forming an evaluation committee to issue an evaluation report on unfit nominees, providing question banks for legislators' review, and forming a Legislative Yuan observation team to release daily observation results. They effectively exerted civic supervisory influence across the three stages of presidential nomination, nominee evaluation, and the Legislative Yuan's exercise of consent. Although Mr. Cheng Chung-mo (城仲模), whom the alliance named as unfit, ultimately still passed the Legislative Yuan's review with high votes, outsiders generally affirmed the alliance's operation as a model of civil associations exercising professional influence and vigorous activism.

Prosecutors' Full Attendance at Hearings and Cross-Examination

In accordance with the conclusions of the National Judicial Reform Conference, the revised new system of the Code of Criminal Procedure, despite stumbling along the way and experiencing countless turbulent waves, was finally fully implemented starting September 1, 2003. This is definitely a major event in the history of judicial reform! For decades in the past, prosecutors did not genuinely attend hearings in accordance with the law to execute public prosecution, forcing judges to concurrently shoulder the dual roles of adjudicator and prosecutor, resulting in deficiencies in human rights protection. After the implementation of the new system, not only did prosecutors attending hearings throughout liven up courtroom proceedings, but due to the adoption of rigorous evidence rules and amendments leaning toward an adversarial system, it has been of absolute benefit to the protection of judicial human rights!

Passage of the Legal Aid Act

Lawsuits consume a truly non-trivial amount of time, energy, and money. Judicial reform has consistently moved toward saving litigants' labor and expenses while realizing fairness and justice. The passage of the Legal Aid Act on December 23, 2003, took another step forward toward this goal. In the past, many low-income households and socially disadvantaged individuals, lacking the financial resources to hire lawyers, fell into the quagmire of vast laws without knowing how to seek relief. Although our courts had litigation guidance, and the private sector had many public-interest-minded lawyers, universities, or associations voluntarily assisting with many cases, the depth and breadth of assistance were ultimately insufficient. After the passage of the Legal Aid Act, a state-funded foundation hires lawyers to help those in need of assistance with lawsuits, transforming the unreasonable phenomenon of social litigation inequality caused by class inequality. We hope that in the future, the review committee members specifically tasked with assessing the necessity of relief will further proceed from the perspectives of human rights protection and social assistance, bringing the benevolent intent of the Legal Aid Act to its absolute fullest. The existence of the Legal Aid Foundation prevents the law from degrading into a system that merely protects the wealthy.

The Century Trial of "Su Chien-ho, Liu Bin-lang, and Chuang Lin-xun"

The chastity of the queen of justice may perhaps be unquestionable in this case, but her foolish, lazy, arrogant, and stubborn ugly facade shocked the general public. During the process of civil groups and volunteer lawyers rescuing this case, the public saw clearly for the first time: the principle of ex officio investigation does not bring a righteous judge like Justice Pao, but rather unchecked arbitrariness, laziness, and bias. They also saw clearly: it is self-incrimination rather than the presumption of innocence that dominates judicial practice. Furthermore, they realized: the result of courts chronically relying on confessions while ignoring rules of evidence is tantamount to encouraging police to extract confessions illegally. When the courts repeatedly dismissed extraordinary appeals and retrials even after this case was corrected by the Control Yuan, it clearly proclaimed to the world that the extraordinary relief system in the current Code of Criminal Procedure has been rendered virtually useless amidst the arrogance and refusal to admit mistakes of the judicial bureaucracy. The impact of this case, extending beyond amendments to the Code of Criminal Procedure, norms for police crime investigation, and the enhancement of criminal forensics quality, most importantly questions the social conscience: when facing crime, do we ultimately want a judiciary that steadfastly upholds the presumption of innocence and would rather let the guilty go free than punish the innocent, or do we want to turn the judiciary into a witch-hunting machine that would rather punish the innocent than let anyone go free?