In an interview, Judicial Yuan Vice President Su Yeong-chin (蘇永欽) elaborated on the meaning of the Council of Grand Justices’ Constitutional Interpretation No. 732.
He said, referring to the land used for the MeHAS housing development project, that it was not the contigious land deemed by the grand justices as having been used in violation of the Constitution, but land slated for the Taipei Metro that fell outside the scope of the ruling.
Su said that if the party that requested the interpretation were to ask for a retrial based on this interpretation, such a request would not be accepted and the ruling would not be overturned.
Grand justices are not usually available for interviews, especially with reference to constitutional interpretations. Since the ruling is explained in the interpretation, there would have been no need for Su to go through the trouble of spelling it out if it had not been for the media, which did not understand the interpretation and thus were not able to report it clearly.
Su, in a break from the judiciary’s traditional passivity, sought to be interviewed, even though there was no need for him to take the risk of others misinterpreting his willingness to offer an explanation as an intervention to the judicial process by announcing how the MeHAS case would end.
It is possible that Su wanted the party that requested the interpretation to gain a deeper understanding of its meaning to achieve the objective of resolving the litigation dispute in one fell swoop.
Grand justices are normally silent, but Su had quite a lot to say and he even belittled the media, while seeming over-anxious.
The nature of judicial power is to be passive. Compared with the past, when officials would avoid getting involved in petty disputes, it might be said that Su, in this particular case, has been both courageous and proactive. What lower-court judges find most annoying about higher-court judges is finger-pointing and involvement in individual cases.
Su rushed to announce the ruling in the MeHAS case, before the other party could even appeal the decision.
It can be said that no matter what the final verdict will be in this case, it would be ridiculed as a miscarriage of justice, which saw intervention in its earliest stages. And this perception would wrongfully discredit ordinary judges.
Perhaps Su wanted to promote a constitutional petition system. The advantages of such a system would be that after the council declares something to be unconstitutional, the outcome of individual cases could be corrected, and there would be no need for repeated, lengthy, unnecessary retrials and extraordinary appeals.
However, given that Judicial Yuan officials on several occasions have lobbied in the Legislative Yuan against the introduction of a constitutional petition system, it seems as though Su’s promotion of such a system would be out of place and might make the public wonder what he is thinking.
Kao Jung-chih is a lawyer and executive director of the Judicial Reform Foundation.
Translated by Clare Lear
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