The Supreme Administrative Court Reviews Its Own Recusal Motions

The "recusal system" is designed to achieve the purpose of a fair trial. If citizens believe that the judge presiding over a case has a special relationship with a party, or that the judge is likely to arouse doubts among the parties regarding the impartiality of the judgment, they may file a "motion for judge recusal" with the court to exclude that judge from participating in the trial.

The law explicitly stipulates that a motion for judge recusal shall be ruled upon by another collegial panel, and the recused judge must never participate. Even if the recused judge considers the recusal motion improper, another collegial panel must still make the determination on whether recusal is required. This prevents judges from reviewing their own grounds for recusal, ensuring that the recusal review procedure is impartial and unselfish in both form and substance, thereby earning public trust.

Believing that Supreme Administrative Court judges had participated in previous trials and might be biased, a citizen filed a motion for the judges' recusal. Surprisingly, the Supreme Administrative Court judges themselves determined that this was merely the citizen's "subjective opinion speculating on the judge's potential bias," found the motion to be without merit, and failed to refer it to another collegial panel for a ruling in accordance with the law, merely stating in the "judgment" of the case that the recusal motion "shall be dismissed."

The Control Yuan determined that after receiving the written motion for judge recusal, the judges in this case did not follow legal procedures to form another collegial panel to review the recusal motion; instead, the original recused judges reviewed it themselves. Furthermore, they did not dismiss the recusal motion by means of a "ruling," but directly stated the reasons for denying recusal within the judgment — a practice that is clearly illegal (105年度司調字第7號).

In response, a citizen filed a complaint and requested a judge evaluation. Ultimately, the Judges Evaluation Committee (JEC) determined that the Supreme Administrative Court has historically assigned recusal motions first to the judges handling the original case. Only if those judges find grounds for recusal do they need to rule to suspend the litigation proceedings and transfer the matter to another collegial panel; if the judges deem recusal unnecessary, they do not need to transfer it to a collegial panel and can dismiss the motion themselves within the judgment (106年度評字第1號). In other words, judges can review recusal motions themselves after receiving them, and only need to assign the recusal motion to another collegial panel if they deem recusal necessary.

The JEC tells us that this is a systemic problem of the Supreme Administrative Court, and the judges merely acted in accordance with the Supreme Administrative Court's internal rules. Even if these internal rules cause citizens to "misunderstand," this is an issue of the Supreme Administrative Court reviewing its case-assignment guidelines and cannot be attributed to fault on the part of the judges. Is the JEC's resolution trying to instruct citizens that they should not "misunderstand" the recusal system, or is it actually covertly criticizing the Supreme Administrative Court for blatantly violating legal provisions on "illegal case assignment" from the very beginning?

The JEC believes the judges did nothing wrong and that the Supreme Administrative Court's system is solely to blame, allowing the judges to walk away scot-free. But how will the Supreme Administrative Court respond? Or perhaps no one intends to respond at all, and it is merely a "feint" — just like the recusal system itself, entirely a sham.

※ This article was published in the Apple Daily on 2017/11/30