After the Amendment of the Attorney Regulation Act

The United Nations formulated the "Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers," emphasizing that "self-regulation of the legal profession" is also an important link in safeguarding human rights. The Legislative Yuan recently passed the amendment to the Attorney Regulation Act, stipulating that attorneys joining a local bar association simultaneously become individual members of the "Taiwan Bar Association" and have the right to directly elect its chairperson and board directors and supervisors. The author hopes that the new self-regulatory system for the legal profession can better protect human rights, realize social justice, and promote democratic rule of law!

Under the old law, attorneys were required to join a local bar association, and local bar associations formed the "National Bar Association" (hereinafter referred to as the NBA). The operations of association affairs were manipulated by a "small circle" through "vote-allocation" for step-by-step advancement; the chairperson of the NBA was like a common lord pushed and elected by the heads of "local factional alliances," following the "unwritten rule" of taking turns among the northern, central, and southern regions. Although the NBA possessed the legal status to represent attorneys nationwide, individual attorneys had no direct connection with the NBA, making it impossible to demand "democratic accountability"!

The senior leadership of the NBA was enthusiastic about cross-strait exchanges, aspiring to "safeguard the rights and interests of the Taiwanese people in China" and "properly resolve legal problems arising from cross-strait exchanges," yet they consistently failed to state their position when Taiwanese citizens such as Lee Ming-che visited China and "were disappeared." When the chairperson attended the "Cross-Strait Peaceful Development Legal Forum" in the middle of this year and led a presentation on the "reform direction of Taiwan's attorney system," had they also been able to offer candid advice on China's human rights and rule of law, and voice support for the persecuted "human rights lawyers" across the strait, it undoubtedly would have better demonstrated the substantive meaning of such exchanges! The NBA's long-standing silence on China's worsening human rights condition reveals the essence of the "local factional alliances" in caring only for local prestige, resources, and welfare, which is perhaps also the united-front achievement of the Chinese Communist Party in lavishly treating "factional leaders" over the years.

Liberal democracy and totalitarian enslavement are engaged in an all-out struggle, and old-school tactics will ultimately face the test of a new era; in future judicial reforms and the operation of legal self-regulation, young attorneys should no longer be absent and muted!

※ This article was published in the Liberty Times on 2019.12.15