Why Are Unfit Judges and Prosecutors Impossible to Remove?
Last edited: 2026-07-27
What Are Judicial and Prosecutorial "Evaluations"?
Judges and prosecutors represent the state in exercising judicial public authority, and their duty is to deliver fair rulings in specific cases. If the public is dissatisfied with a judgment, they may file an "appeal" in accordance with the law. However, if judges or prosecutors engage in illegal or inappropriate courtroom attitudes and behaviors during investigations or trials—such as ridiculing parties, forcing settlements, or extorting confessions through detention—how can citizens protect themselves, and who should they "complain" to?
The "evaluation procedure" stipulated in the Judges Act (which also applies to prosecutors in our country) means that if you unfortunately encounter illegal or inappropriate courtroom attitudes and case-handling behaviors by a judge or prosecutor during litigation, you can file a complaint with a specific authority, a bar association, or an approved civil organization. These entities will then submit a request for an "individual case evaluation" against the judge or prosecutor to the Judge Evaluation Board or Prosecutor Evaluation Board on your behalf.
After an individual case evaluation is requested, the evaluation board will investigate whether the judge or prosecutor did indeed engage in the illegal or inappropriate behavior complained of by the public. If so, corresponding dispositions will be imposed to sanction or remove unfit judges and prosecutors, thereby upholding sound judicial ethos and enhancing public trust in the judiciary.
We believe that most judges and prosecutors in Taiwan work diligently to safeguard the rights and interests of the people. It is certainly not what we wish to see if the illegal handling of cases or inappropriate speech and conduct by a small number of judges and prosecutors generate public distrust in the judiciary. Precisely for this reason, the monitoring and removal mechanisms for judges and prosecutors are of such vital importance.
Introduction to the Current Evaluation System Under the Judges Act
Under the current system of the Judges Act, the public "cannot" directly request an evaluation from the evaluation board; requests can only be initiated through courts, prosecutors' offices, bar associations, or civil organizations.
After reviewing a case, if the evaluation board finds that a judge warrants disciplinary action, it may refer the case to the Control Yuan for review. If the Control Yuan considers that there is indeed a problem, it then refers the case to the Disciplinary Court (composed of the President of the Disciplinary Court and four judges) for trial. Only after successfully navigating these protracted procedures may a judge or prosecutor ultimately face dispositions such as dismissal, transfer to a non-judicial position, a fine, or a reprimand.
The Judge Evaluation Board is composed of 11 members: 3 judges, 1 prosecutor, 3 attorneys, and 4 scholars and persons of public impartiality. The "judge, prosecutor, and attorney" members are chosen through internal elections held by their respective groups, whereas the "scholars and persons of public impartiality" members are selected by the Ministry of Justice and the Taiwan Bar Association, which each nominate 4 non-prosecutors and non-attorneys to be appointed by the President of the Judicial Yuan. (The Prosecutor Evaluation Board is similarly composed of 11 members: 3 prosecutors, 1 judge, 3 attorneys, and 4 scholars and persons of public impartiality.)
Chart: Flowchart of the Judge Evaluation Procedure by the JEB (Refer to Judge Evaluation Board)
What Specific Behaviors Have Unfit Judges and Prosecutors Exhibited in Recent Years?
Judge Ch'en Hung-pin of the Taipei High Administrative Court repeatedly sexually harassed and forcibly kissed a judicial assistant starting in 2012. After the media exposed the incidents, the Taiwan Association for Human Rights / Taiwan Judicial Reform Foundation requested an individual case evaluation from the Judge Evaluation Board. Following impeachment by the Control Yuan, the Disciplinary Court sentenced Judge Ch'en Hung-pin to "dismissal." However, after Judge Ch'en Hung-pin filed for a retrial of the dismissal judgment, on March 8, 2018 (Women's Day), the Disciplinary Court commuted Judge Ch'en Hung-pin's sentence from dismissal to a "one-year fine on salary," sparking widespread public condemnation.
The reason this case drew significant public attention also includes the fact that Judge Ch'en Chih-hsiang—then a member of the Disciplinary Court panel trying the sexual harassment case—went on radio and television programs seven consecutive times before the Disciplinary Court's judgment commuting the fine was even completed, discussing the individual case in violation of a judge's duty of confidentiality and making highly controversial remarks. For a time, the phrase "attempted extramarital affair" by a judge became widely known. Consequently, Judge Ch'en Chih-hsiang was also subjected to a judicial evaluation request by the Judicial Yuan and the JRF, and the Judge Evaluation Board later resolved to recommend a "reprimand" disposition.
In July 2018, Prosecutor Lin Chün-yu of the Hualien District Prosecutors Office believed his daughter had been bullied by a classmate in kindergarten and that the teacher had failed to handle it properly. He led police officers twice to the kindergarten to ascertain the facts. Aside from interrogating young children at the kindergarten, he demanded that the kindergarten director provide surveillance footage. When the director stated that the kindergarten had no obligation to provide the footage because it contained footage of other children, Prosecutor Lin Chün-yu shockingly intimidated the director, saying, "Are you preparing to come to the prosecutors office, preparing to go to prison? Well, that's no problem." "Even if we apply to the court, we can still get it. I am being polite to you today, I am being very polite to you. We'll apply for a ruling, and then we'll come here and search a bunch of things, searching things that shouldn't be searched." "You are standing on the side of protecting those bad kids, standing on the side of shielding them." "I am doing this for your good. Do you prefer having someone come here and rummage through everything? Is that it?"—demanding the surrender of the video footage.
After Prosecutor Lin Chün-yu's outrageous behavior was exposed by the media, to appease public anger, the Ministry of Justice immediately suspended him and referred him to the Control Yuan for investigation. The Control Yuan unanimously passed an impeachment motion, and the Disciplinary Court ruled: "Dismissal from the position of prosecutor, and transfer to a non-prosecutorial position."
While presiding over a document-forgery case in 2014, Judge Tseng Yü-ming of the Taoyuan District Court roared and rebuked the defendant in the case, saying: "You better watch yourself! Don't look for me to detain you!" "You have a disdainful look toward the court, you better watch yourself!" "I mean what I say, you better not disbelieve it, you better not test fate, I am going to detain you!" "This doesn't need to be detained? Arrogant!" "If you think your lawyer isn't enough, you can fire him right here in court!"—threatening to detain the defendant, which caused the defendant to suffer an emotional breakdown and say: "What do you mean? Why won't you listen to me? I have been wronged!" "I won't live anymore, I'm going to go die!" The defendant then twice slammed her head against the desk of the "defendant's seat," resulting in a head injury. The judge used provocative language during the hearing and subsequently ordered bailiffs to "put handcuffs on her for protection," repeatedly impairing the defendant's rights and demonstrating a clear failure in procedural direction.
Following this, even though the defendant was no longer in the courtroom, the prosecutor, defense counsel, and witnesses were still present. Judge Tseng Yü-ming continued with inappropriate remarks linking the case to provincial and ethnic backgrounds: "Why should someone from this province ask me, a mainlander, to plead with the prosecutor for you?"
In addition to the aforementioned cases, Judge Tseng Yü-ming also engaged in behaviors such as preventing the defendant from speaking and losing emotional control during court sessions. The evaluation board recommended his dismissal as a judge and transfer to a non-judicial position, but the Disciplinary Court ultimately ruled only for a fine equivalent to ten months' salary.
While handling a traffic accident case in 2013, Prosecutor Wu Wen-cheng of the Pingtung District Prosecutors Office, because a settlement could not be reached, shockingly told the two parties: "...or since you are both 23 years old, why don't you just get married? ... Otherwise, what else is to be done now?", and "To judge this case, I think we have to look at whose speed was faster. I feel what she said should be true; girls riding scooters are usually not as fast as boys, and you should ask your own conscience, when the incident happened, were you riding faster? Or was she riding faster? If you were riding faster, your negligence would be greater..."
From the very first investigative hearing of this case, Prosecutor Wu Wen-cheng dispensed with investigating and questioning the details of the traffic accident and negligent injury, focusing the hearing instead on urging the two parties to settle. He also made bantering remarks telling them to just get married, and directly asserted without reason that the defendant, being a male, must have been riding faster and therefore bore greater responsibility. Prosecutor Wu Wen-cheng's words and conduct during the investigation clearly violated the Code of Ethics for Prosecutors. However, the evaluation board ultimately concluded that such behavior by the prosecutor "was not of a severely grave nature" in violation of regulations, requiring only judicial supervision rather than disciplinary punishment.
What Is Wrong with the Current Judge and Prosecutor Evaluation Systems?
Case 1 Judge "Intimidating Defendant" and "Extorting Confessions Through Detention" Case
Judge Ho Yü-ch'en of the Criminal Division of the Taoyuan District Court revealed a prejudicial mindset unfavorable to the defendants right at the beginning of the case, and even intimidated two of the defendants in court, saying: "After I finish checking those funds for you, I will consider letting you go," "It's very simple, how the money came about, just explain it like that and I won't need to check. What I want to check right now is the money... I won't detain you for too long, after checking I'll let you go," and "Our practice is that only after questioning do we have a chance to release people, understand?" Because these two defendants initially denied that other defendants were involved, the judge threatened that if they were unwilling to implicate the other defendants, they would be detained. This used "detention" as a threat or the "revocation of detention" as an inducement as a means to obtain testimonies. Judge Ho Yü-ch'en's method of handling cases constituted improper interrogation, and testimonies obtained through threats are also highly questionable in terms of authenticity.
This case was submitted for judicial evaluation by the JRF. The Judge Evaluation Board randomly sampled criminal cases previously handled by Judge Ho Yü-ch'en and discovered that he indeed conducted substantive evidence investigations during preparatory proceedings, showing a tendency to directly interrogate defendants regarding criminal facts, which is in violation of legal provisions.
However, regarding Judge Ho Yü-ch'en's serious and illegal conduct of extorting confessions through detention, the Judge Evaluation Board ultimately considered that the evaluation investigation procedure already had a "warning effect" on Judge Ho Yü-ch'en, and therefore "there is no need for disciplinary action."
Case 2 Judge "Poor Courtroom Attitude" and "Improper Scheduling of Court Dates" Case
During the proceedings of civil cases, Judge Liu Cheng-chung of the Taichung District Court continuously prevented parties from stating their opinions, inappropriately pressured them to settle, and frequently made sarcastic remarks, such as: "You're all defrauding the state's money!", "Do you know that summoning you is a waste of our postage money?", "If you have plenty of time, I have no choice, right? I sit here and get a salary, you don't.", "The court does not welcome unclean hands coming in to litigate.", "Look, wearing slippers, how could he possibly admit it?", "No wonder people laugh at you, the mediation committee can't even write a statement of defense!", "Your sincerity makes me extremely chilled!", "Isn't this just like North Korea?"—ridiculing the parties.
In addition, Judge Liu Cheng-chung's scheduling of court dates was also improper; he habitually concentrated all monthly court dates onto a single day. Taking December 2018 as an example, he scheduled 82 cases for court hearings in a single morning, among which 48 were oral arguments and 34 were sentence pronouncements. Calculated this way, the average time spent trying a case was fundamentally less than 3 minutes! Under such compressed time constraints, it was simply impossible to properly listen to what the parties wanted to say, nor could one properly understand the legal relationship between the two parties or clarify the case.
After the JRF requested an evaluation, although the JEB investigation deemed that Judge Liu Cheng-chung's courtroom remarks were "impatient, urgent, and used inappropriate language, making it rather difficult for people to adapt to or accept," and that his scheduling was also improper and in need of improvement, it nevertheless ultimately issued a resolution of "request unfounded." This was merely because it considered that Judge Liu Cheng-chung's outrageous speech and conduct had not yet reached the degree of "severe gravity," requiring only that he be handed over to the court president to urge attention.
Why does the evaluation board repeatedly issue outrageous resolutions similar to the two cases above? Why do people frequently cry out that the system for removing unfit judges and prosecutors is ineffective? What is wrong with the evaluation system? Our analysis is as follows:
As mentioned earlier, under the current Judges Act, individuals cannot directly request evaluations. This institutional design was originally adopted because official authorities worried that allowing the public to directly request evaluations would lead to abusive requests from citizens, and public grievances would overwhelm the evaluation board. Under this design, unless civil organizations can file for an evaluation, the public can only complain to the competent authorities, namely the Judicial Yuan and the Ministry of Justice. However, we observe from the Judicial Yuan's statistics that the number of public grievances received by the Judicial Yuan regarding judges totaled 7,277 cases in 2016 and 6,489 cases in 2017; yet the Judicial Yuan only requested evaluations for 2 judges in 2016 and 0 in 2017. The Ministry of Justice did not even publicize the number of grievances regarding prosecutors; officially, it only requested an evaluation for 1 prosecutor in 2016 and 0 in 2017. Public grievances concerning the judiciary were severely silenced by the authorities and failed to enter the evaluation board to be processed.
A design should be established allowing the public to directly request evaluations from the evaluation board without having to go through screening by official authorities or civil organizations. This prevents competent authorities from being passive and inactive regarding public complaints, or civil organizations from being constrained by limited resources and failing to submit evaluation requests, which restricts the public's right to complain about unfit judges and prosecutors.
The advantage of allowing the public to directly request evaluations is also that it enables evaluation members to hear the most genuine opinions of the public regarding unfit judges and prosecutors from numerous and direct public complaints, and to see the true problems inherent in the judiciary.
According to the provisions of the Judges Act, among the members of the Judge and Prosecutor Evaluation Boards, "legal professional" members—namely judges, prosecutors, and attorneys—account for 7 seats, leaving only 4 "scholar and socially impartial person" members. In reality, however, legal scholars invariably fill these 4 slots as well. An actual analysis of the backgrounds of past prosecutor evaluation members reveals that the first, second, and third terms each had only 1 member without a legal background, while the fourth term had not even 1.
However, because the training process for legal professionals in Taiwan shares a high degree of homogeneity, deliberations inevitably suffer from overly narrow perspectives or a legal-centric corporatism. For instance, Judge Liu Cheng-chung frequently made sarcastic remarks toward parties during court hearings; members of the public who attended his hearings were filled with anger toward the judiciary on that account, and ordinary citizens upon hearing this cannot accept such behavior either. Yet the evaluation board is still able to "find reasons" for the judge, stating that although Judge Liu's behavior has room for improvement, it does not constitute "severe gravity" and requires no disciplinary action.
Such an evaluation board is less aimed at "removing" unfit judges and prosecutors than at "protecting" them. We believe that only by enhancing the diversity of the evaluation board's membership, incorporating professional talents from different fields, and allowing non-legal professionals to hold more than half of the seats can the decisions rendered avoid bias and align as closely as possible with public opinion.
Furthermore, the aforementioned case of Judge Ch'en Hung-pin highlighted the importance of external perspectives in judicial disciplinary procedures. Currently, aside from the President of the Disciplinary Court, the remaining members of the Disciplinary Court are all judges, making it difficult to shed legal corporatism. As a result, the Disciplinary Court delivered a judgment lacking gender awareness that leniently treated the judge involved in sexual harassment. We believe that since members of the public will henceforth have the opportunity to serve as "lay judges" in ordinary criminal cases, external members should likewise be incorporated into the Disciplinary Court, enabling citizens to directly participate in the Disciplinary Court's trials of cases involving unfit judges and prosecutors. This would reverse the current status quo where trials are conducted entirely by professional judges, thereby dispelling public concerns and the impression that the Disciplinary Court is merely shielding its own after cases like this.
According to the provisions of the Judges Act, the statute of limitations for the public to request a prosecutor evaluation is 2 years; that is, the public must request an evaluation within 2 years after the prosecutor's indictment or non-prosecution disposition. However, many defendants who have been indicted are often exhausted from running around for subsequent trial procedures, leaving them neither the time nor the courage to request a prosecutor evaluation for fear of affecting subsequent judgments. By the time the trial concludes and the case is finalized, the date of indictment has often long exceeded 2 years, rendering it impossible to request an evaluation for illegal or inappropriate prosecutorial conduct.
Our research reveals that the excessively short time limit for initiating prosecutor evaluations, which prevents the reporting of unfit prosecutors, has become the primary reason for the scarcity of prosecutor evaluation cases. From the establishment of the Prosecutor Evaluation Board up through 2017, out of 16 un-evaluated cases, as many as 12 were dismissed due to exceeding the request time limit (accounting for 75%). This overly short time limit obstructs the public's right to file complaints against prosecutors and is detrimental to the implementation of the prosecutorial monitoring mechanism. We believe that the time limit for prosecutor evaluations should be extended to three years after the finalization of the case judgment in order to protect public rights and interests.
Evaluation board members have a habit when investigating cases of determining whether a judge's or prosecutor's courtroom attitude was good solely by retrieving courtroom audio recordings and transcripts. Failing to inquire about the public's true courtroom conditions and experiences makes it impossible to stand from the perspective of the parties and feel the improper treatment suffered by the public in the judiciary. This is why outcomes like Judge Liu Cheng-chung's case occur, where despite the judge's sarcastic remarks, the Judge Evaluation Board simply listened to the recordings and concluded that the judge's courtroom attitude was acceptable and not yet serious, ignoring the true feelings of the parties present.
After an evaluation request is submitted, the evaluation board will ask the evaluated judge or prosecutor to submit written or oral defenses. However, after the judge or prosecutor responds, these defense materials are not provided to the citizen who requested the evaluation, denying them the opportunity to express their views on the defense content. Such an imbalanced procedural design results in the evaluation board making decisions—upon hearing only one side's defense—that credit the assertions of the judge or prosecutor that their conduct was unproblematic.
We advocate strengthening the procedural participation rights of parties in evaluation proceedings so that, barring legitimate reasons, the evaluation board should investigate facts and evidence requested by parties, and grant parties the right to express opinions and inspect materials during the proceedings, enabling the evaluation board to more comprehensively listen to public dissatisfaction with the judiciary.
Under the current evaluation mechanism, when the evaluation board deems disciplinary action necessary, it must first refer the case to the Control Yuan for review before it can proceed to the Disciplinary Court for trial. In other words, the evaluation board cannot directly send cases to the Disciplinary Court. Yet the Control Yuan and the evaluation board exercise their powers independently and are mutually subordinate to neither. Upon receiving a case from the evaluation board, the Control Yuan re-investigates it, sometimes reaching conclusions opposite to those of the evaluation board. This causes the exact same evaluation case to be repeatedly evaluated by different institutions. The current system is cumbersome and redundant, time-consuming, and resource-wasteful.
We believe that when the evaluation board deems disciplinary action necessary, it should be able to directly refer the case to the Disciplinary Court for trial without having to go through Control Yuan impeachment, while simultaneously retaining the Control Yuan's inherent power to impeach judges and prosecutors. This would establish a "dual-track system" where both the evaluation board and the Control Yuan can submit cases to the Disciplinary Court, balancing procedural efficiency with the protection of parties' rights and interests.
The Judges Act stipulates that a comprehensive assessment of judges and prosecutors must be conducted every three years. Case parties, attorneys, prosecutors, and others fill out questionnaires regarding judges' courtroom attitudes and judgment quality, which are then compiled statistically, with the assessment results potentially affecting judges' performance evaluations. Comprehensive assessments of judges and prosecutors are administered by the "Judicial Yuan and the Ministry of Justice," and the assessment results are not made public. If problems are discovered, cases are to be referred for individual case evaluations.
However, in the past, because comprehensive assessments were managed by the Judicial Yuan and the Ministry of Justice under a dynamic of "insiders evaluating insiders," the results of the two completed comprehensive assessments following the implementation of the Judges Act showed that up to 98% of judges received good performance ratings, and not a single judge or prosecutor was referred for an individual case evaluation. Comparing this with the recent endless stream of judicial integrity issues, it is manifestly apparent that the comprehensive assessment system has completely lost its discriminative power.
Coupled with the fact that assessment results are not made public, the public cannot supervise unfit judges and prosecutors through the comprehensive assessment mechanism at all. The comprehensive assessment system, which consumes massive resources, has been reduced to a mere formality, failing to exercise its supervisory function and remaining a dead letter subject to continuous outside questioning.
When three recent cases of unfounded or un-evaluated decisions by the Prosecutor Evaluation Board were petitioned to the Control Yuan for investigation, all yielded investigative results indicating that supervision should be applied. This is because members of the Control Yuan serve full-time, are mostly non-legal professionals, and are equipped with three tiers of investigators to assist. It demonstrates that being "full-time, non-legal professionals, and having investigative manpower" are key factors for effectively monitoring judges and prosecutors, and constitute necessary reform measures.
To effectively eliminate unfit judges and prosecutors, we advocate strengthening the powers of the evaluation board, including directly accepting public complaints and adding comprehensive assessment powers. To cope with this future workload, the civil society draft version plans to add 5 "full-time members" and "full-time investigative personnel" to handle evaluation affairs, enhancing the capacity of the evaluation board to shoulder the work that will increase in the future.
A Poorly Designed Evaluation System Under the Judges Act Has Caused Public Trust in the Judiciary to Hit Rock Bottom
The Judges Act was implemented in 2011, and the evaluation system for unfit judges and prosecutors began operating. Over the course of more than 8 years of implementation, the Judge Evaluation Board has accepted only 65 cases. Among the 60 cases already concluded, the number of substantiated evaluations is 25, a substantiation rate of 41%, and only one judge has been dismissed by the Disciplinary Court and transferred to a non-judicial position. As for the Prosecutor Evaluation Board, while its accepted case volume has not been made public, out of 59 accepted and concluded cases, only 20 evaluations were substantiated, a substantiation rate of 34%, and merely one prosecutor was dismissed from office and lost qualifications for civil service appointment.
Following the implementation of the Judges Act, the number of disciplined judges and prosecutors has actually decreased compared to the past, and disciplinary sanctions have also been drastically mitigated. The system for removing unfit judges and prosecutors that civil society advocated and fought for over many years has instead turned out worse than prior disciplinary results for civil servants, turning the entire evaluation board into a sham.
The poor design of the evaluation system under the Judges Act has led to the failure to remove unfit personnel. The inability to weed out unfit judges and prosecutors is reflected in the results of various recent polls showing that public trust in judges and prosecutors continues to hit rock bottom. The public complains that the government always shields unfit judges and prosecutors and is unable to come up with concrete methods to improve judicial quality. Incremental public grievances find no outlet, and citizens consequently no longer respect or trust judicial judgments.
The Evaluation System Under the Judges Act Is Poorly Designed and Requires Immediate Amendment
From comprehensive judicial statistics, general public opinion polls, to specific individual case evaluation statuses, all point to the conclusion that the evaluation system in the current Judges Act requires immediate amendment. While the Judicial Yuan has proposed an amended version, the JRF has correspondingly proposed a civil society version of the Judges Act draft, which has also been proposed by legislators. A brief introduction of the key points of the civil society draft is provided below, along with a simple comparison against the Judicial Yuan's official version:
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The Public Can Directly Request Evaluations, Time Limits Are Extended, and Parties' Procedural Participation Is Increased
Both the Judicial Yuan version and the civil society version of the amendment drafts confer upon "the public the power to directly request individual case evaluations from the evaluation board," which is commendable.
In the Judicial Yuan version, for both judge evaluations and prosecutor evaluations, the time limit is "calculated from the date of completion of case handling for three years." In other words, a judge evaluation must be filed within 3 years after the first-instance judgment; at this time, even the appeal judgment may not yet have been finalized, or perhaps a second-instance judgment has not even been rendered. Similarly, a prosecutor evaluation must be filed within 3 years after indictment; at this time, the judgment may not yet be finalized, or the first instance may not even be adjudicated. Because cases are still pending trial, many parties dare not initiate evaluations against prosecutors. The design of the Judicial Yuan's version will make it difficult for the public to initiate evaluations against judges and prosecutors. In contrast, under the civil society version, for both judge and prosecutor evaluations, the starting point for requesting an evaluation is postponed to "three years from the finalization of the judgment."
Regarding the "evaluation requestor's right to procedural participation," the Judicial Yuan version adds that parties may request the investigation of evidence and to state opinions at meetings, requestors may apply to be served the evaluated judge's opinion statement, but the board may restrict or refuse, and it further stipulates that the evaluated judge may apply to inspect the file. However, we believe that the Judicial Yuan version's provision empowering the board with the discretion to "restrict or refuse to serve the opinion statement of the evaluated judge" lacks any clear criteria to restrict it, easily lending itself to arbitrariness. We suggest that opinion statements should in principle be served to requestors, and restriction or refusal should be permitted only in exceptional circumstances, which should also be explicitly specified. In addition, it is unreasonable that only the evaluated judge may apply to inspect files; requestors should likewise be granted the power to inspect files. Furthermore, the civil society version also adds provisions for procedural participation during the evaluation process, allowing both parties to express opinions in the proceedings.
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Non-Legal Professionals Form the Majority of Evaluation Board Members, and Specialized Staff Is Expanded
Although the Judicial Yuan version adds two scholars and socially impartial persons to the evaluation board, legal members still constitute a majority. We believe it should be explicitly stipulated that non-legal professionals account for more than half of the seats to eliminate public skepticism regarding legal professionals shielding one another on the evaluation board. Therefore, the civil society version designs a selection committee composed of socially impartial persons to select evaluation members without legal backgrounds, and they hold the majority, preventing legal-centric corporatism and diversifying discussion perspectives. To handle the volume of work arising from public direct requests for evaluations, the civil society version additionally designs full-time members and specialized personnel to enhance the board's efficiency.
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The Judicial Yuan Should Directly Refer Cases to the Disciplinary Court Based on Evaluation Resolutions, Simplifying Disciplinary Procedures
The Judicial Yuan version maintains the current system whereby cases must first be submitted to the Control Yuan for impeachment following an evaluation board resolution before they can proceed to the Disciplinary Court for trial. However, to avoid redundant reviews that waste time and unnecessarily prolong the removal process for unfit judges and prosecutors—given that the Control Yuan and the evaluation board already exercise their respective powers independently and are mutually subordinate to neither—the civil society draft stipulates that when the evaluation board deems disciplinary action necessary following a resolution, it can directly send the case to the Disciplinary Court for trial without going through the Control Yuan stage, while the Control Yuan simultaneously retains its original power to refer cases.
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Design of the Comprehensive Assessment System
The Judicial Yuan draft version does not amend the provisions concerning comprehensive assessments because official authorities believe that the two comprehensive assessments held previously have made substantial progress and require only fine-tuning, without needing to pull most judges into the fold. However, to avoid the pitfalls of insiders evaluating insiders, the civil society amendment draft stipulates that comprehensive assessments shall be handled by an "evaluation board" with external member participation, and the comprehensive assessment results shall be made public. If problems are discovered, individual case evaluations are conducted directly by the evaluation board to genuinely achieve the function of supervising judges and prosecutors.
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Establishment of Full-Time Evaluation Members
Regarding the organizational restructuring of the evaluation board, the Judicial Yuan version's provisions merely state that the Judicial Yuan may hire appropriate personnel to assist, without increasing full-time members, and no significant increase is seen in administrative staffing either. Whether this can effectively enhance the efficiency of the evaluation board remains a question mark.
To resolve the current low efficiency of the evaluation board, the civil society draft proposes adding five full-time members to the evaluation board and explicitly stipulating that the convener shall be chosen from among the full-time members. In addition, depending on the complexity of affairs, full-time personnel may be hired to handle the administrative affairs of the evaluation board, hoping to enhance both the quantity and quality of evaluation board resolutions through greater manpower investment.
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The Quality of "Judicial Quality" Should Be Subject to Evaluation
We agree that the application of pure legal interpretations is not within the scope that the evaluation board should handle, but an "error in subsumption between facts and law" is not equivalent to legal interpretation. Rather, it is a bias regarding basic facts and fundamental principles of legal application, and constitutes a severe error in adjudication.
Simply put, when a severe error in adjudication occurs, aside from utilizing original litigation remedies, the case-handling quality of judicial officers who commit major subsumption errors also needs to be supervised. Evaluating such conduct is by no means interfering with the judiciary; it is merely demanding basic judicial quality. Therefore, the civil society version adds the provision that "errors in subsumption between facts and law are subject to evaluation."
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While the Public Can Directly Request Evaluations, Retaining the Necessity of Group-Requested Evaluations Remains Essential
Under the current Judges Act, the agencies and groups capable of accepting and assisting the public in submitting evaluation requests are "courts," "prosecutors' offices," "bar associations," and "civil organizations." Observing the number of judge and prosecutor evaluation requests filed over the years, individual case evaluations filed by the JRF account for 65% of the total cases received by the Judge Evaluation Board and an even higher 88% of those received by the Prosecutor Evaluation Board. These figures prove that the intervention of civil monitoring mechanisms is the key to the smooth operation of individual case evaluations. However, the Judicial Yuan's draft version deliberately deletes the eligibility of "civil organizations" to request evaluations. In other words, people's organizations led by the JRF will lose their eligibility to request individual case evaluations of judges and prosecutors after the amendment, raising suspicions that authorities intend to weaken monitoring forces.
What we worry about even more is that vulnerable and helpless parties in cases (such as migrant workers and debt-slaves) and crime victims who are unwilling to be exposed (such as sexual assault victims) will likely be afraid of public authority and unwilling to come forward in the future without the assistance of civil organizations, or will simply be incapable of requesting individual case evaluations—let alone participating in complex and professional evaluation procedures. Furthermore, in certain major judicial integrity cases (such as Prosecutor-General Huang Shih-ming's leak of secrets and Judge Ch'en Hung-pin's sexual harassment case), had the JRF not proactively initiated evaluations in the capacity of a requestor, these judges' and prosecutors' behaviors would never have had the opportunity to enter evaluation proceedings for scrutiny. Therefore, the civil society draft retains the mechanism allowing evaluation requests to be filed through civil organizations.
| Civil Society Draft Version | Judicial Yuan Draft Version | |
| Comprehensive Assessment Amendment | Renamed to comprehensive evaluation, administered instead by a third-party "evaluation board" to allow external forces to intervene in the monitoring of judges and prosecutors, breaking the corporatist culture of mutual protection among insiders, and making comprehensive evaluation results public. Further investigating comprehensive evaluation results, individual case evaluations will be conducted if problematic judges or prosecutors are discovered. | Unamended, still managed by the Judicial Yuan and the Ministry of Justice, and evaluation results are not made public, making it seemingly difficult to change the outcome where the first two comprehensive assessments resulted in zero judges or prosecutors being referred for individual case evaluations. |
| Public Direct Initiation of Evaluations |
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| Non-Legal Professionals Form Majority of Evaluation Board | Explicitly mandates that the evaluation board must be composed of a majority of non-legal professionals. | Although external members are added, judges, prosecutors, and attorneys still occupy a majority of member seats, and external members may still be legal professionals, leaving the problem of narrow perspectives unchanged. |
| Evaluation Board Organizational Restructuring | To cope with public direct initiation of evaluations and enhance board efficiency, 5 full-time members are added, conveners are mandated to be chosen from full-time members, and full-time personnel may be hired depending on case complexity to handle administrative affairs. | Merely stipulates that the Judicial Yuan may hire appropriate personnel to assist, without adding full-time members, and no obvious increase is seen in administrative staffing, making it hard to recognize how evaluation board efficiency can be effectively enhanced. |
| Party Procedural Participation in Investigations | Adds procedural participation rights during evaluation processes, allowing both parties to apply for evidence investigation, inspect materials, and express opinions in proceedings. | Only evaluated judges and prosecutors can apply to inspect files; parties can only apply for the evaluation board to serve opinion statements submitted by evaluated judges and prosecutors, and the board may restrict or refuse. |
| Extension of Evaluation Statute of Limitations | For both judge and prosecutor evaluations, the starting point for requesting evaluations is postponed to "three years from the finalization of the judgment." | For both judge and prosecutor evaluations, the time limit is "calculated from the date of completion of case handling for three years." |
| Streamlining of Evaluation Procedures | The Control Yuan and evaluation board are mutually independent; cases deemed to warrant disciplinary action by either the evaluation board or the Control Yuan can be directly sent to the Disciplinary Court for trial (dual-track system). | Unamended; the evaluation process will remain protracted and time-consuming, making it difficult to efficiently remove unfit judges and prosecutors. |
| Addition of Disciplinary Types | Disciplinary types include suspension in addition to current punishments, and judges can be required to undergo mandatory education, allowing judges and prosecutors to learn from shortcomings alongside punishment. | Adds provisions for depriving or reducing pensions and retirement allowances, but still lacks punishments other than financial penalties and cannot mandate judges and prosecutors to undergo coursework education to refine judicial quality, treating symptoms rather than root causes. |
| Evaluating Judicial Quality | Adds provision: "Those merely criticizing errors in a judge's legal interpretation views shall not be subject to individual case evaluation. However, errors in subsumption between facts and law are excluded herefrom." | Unamended. |
This article is an AI-generated translation of the original Chinese text. In the event of any discrepancy, the Chinese version shall prevail.