Conference Background

Prior to 1999, public grievances against the judiciary ran deep, and public calls for reform were surging.

Since its establishment in 1995, the Judicial Reform Foundation has consistently tracked individual cases, advocated for legislation, and broadly mobilized public attention on judicial reform. By the late 1990s, public dissatisfaction with a stagnant and sluggish judiciary had reached its limit, prompting an unprecedented number of legal professionals to take to the streets and demand prompt reform.

Facing this surging grassroots momentum for reform, then-President Li Teng-hui (李登輝) responded to the public will by committing to institutional judicial reform. In July 1999, the National Conference on Judicial Reform was officially convened. Over the course of three days, representatives from judicial practice, academia, and civil society gathered to reach 32 concrete conclusions, followed by specific implementation measures and timelines proposed by the Judicial Yuan.

This conference was an unprecedented event in Taiwan's judicial reform history, yielding fruitful outcomes. However, a review report three years later showed that the government's overall implementation score reached only 40.6; a review a decade later bluntly remarked, "A decade of judicial reform is like a dream; before waking, one is already worn thin." This history serves as both the starting point of reform and a testament to persistent grassroots pressure.