Op-Ed | Judicial Accountability in Taiwan: Insights and Expectations from the Annual Meeting of the International Association of Judges

On September 18, the 65th Annual Meeting of the International Association of Judges will be held in Taipei. Looking back 23 years to 1999, the same prestigious annual meeting was held in Taiwan, where the Universal Charter of the Judge was formulated and adopted, establishing international standards for the principle of judicial independence and marking a significant milestone in judicial history. Centered around the theme of "Judicial Independence and Constitutionalism," this year's meeting has invited judges from 66 countries to jointly discuss issues such as judicial independence and judicial accountability from perspectives including state power, judicial administration, social pressure, and freedom of speech.

As a civil society organization dedicated to long-term judicial reform, the Judicial Reform Foundation hopes to take the opportunity of this International Association of Judges annual meeting to briefly review the history and unfinished business of Taiwan's Judges Act from the perspective of the relationship between the judicial system and judicial independence, thereby reflecting on and looking forward to the future direction of Taiwan's judicial reform.

In 1995, shortly after the official establishment of the Judicial Reform Foundation, we began advocating for and implementing "judicial evaluation." In 1998, the Foundation, together with other civil society organizations, proposed a citizen-drafted version of the Judges Act for the first time, aiming to establish an open and transparent mechanism for the removal of judges. The rationale was that previously, judges could only be dismissed under limited circumstances such as a finalized criminal judgment, disciplinary action by the Commission for the Disciplinary Action of Public Functionants, or being placed under guardianship, leaving the public with no remedy for a judge's violations of official duties, misconduct, or negligence.

Through years of legislative advocacy, the Legislative Yuan finally three-read and passed the Judges Act in July 2011, initiating a "case-specific evaluation mechanism" to weed out "unfit judges" and thereby safeguard the people's right to a fair trial. However, although citizens had the right to report judges and prosecutors, at the time only institutions or organizations were permitted to file requests, meaning aggrieved parties suffering unfair treatment could not file them on their own. Since then, the Judicial Reform Foundation has been committed to assisting citizens in filing evaluations. It was not until the 2019 legal amendments that citizens under the new system could finally request judicial evaluations directly without going through an organization. Nevertheless, as revealed in the three-year anniversary report of the new system published by the "Judicial Evaluation Commission," among the five evaluation cases sustained over the past few years, all were referred by the courts themselves. How to make citizen-requested evaluations truly functional remains an issue that requires collective brainstorming and continuous review.

Looking at the long term, while judges' courtroom demeanor has indeed improved, quite a few disciplinary cases in recent years have highlighted that court presidents have not been proactive in handling judicial misconduct, pointing to the necessity of reflecting on the internal organizational culture of the courts. Examples include former Taipei High Administrative Court Judge Ch'en Hung-pin and former Hsinchu District Court Judge Wu Chen-fu, both involved in sexual harassment and gender discrimination a few years ago; Judge Hsu An-chieh of the Tainan District Court, who was engulfed in workplace bullying scandals early this year; and Chief Judge Tsai Ming-hung of the Shihlin District Court, who was implicated in July's #MeToo movement, among others. The occurrence of these incidents prompts us to ponder: what kind of organizational culture should the courts, as institutions upholding fairness and justice, foster in order to earn public trust in the judiciary?

From the lifting of martial law to the present, under the principle of "independent adjudication by judges" in Taiwan's judiciary, it is virtually impossible for court presidents to interfere with or intervene in individual cases. Building upon this progress, we believe that without interfering with judicial independence, the supervisory responsibility of court presidents over their subordinate judges should be strengthened. Judicial independence is not a rule-of-law value that rejects accountability; judges require independent protection, but they must simultaneously shoulder accountability so that the judiciary can make further progress through mechanisms of self-reflection.

A distinctive feature of Taiwan's pursuit of judicial reform is the high degree of public participation. The advancement of the judiciary is not merely the result of official efforts; the expectations and support of the Taiwanese people for judicial reform constitute the experience truly worth sharing with the international community. Through this annual meeting of the International Association of Judges, we expect Taiwan's judiciary not only to continuously learn from the strengths of countries around the world, but also to rank among the advanced nations in the future.

This article was published in Up Media on September 17, 2023.