During their short stay in Taiwan as observers at the 42nd annual meeting of the International Association of Judges, a group of international judges and their wives were taken on a visit to the island's judicial institutions to better understand their nature and function.
Unfortunately, some of it was difficult to fathom.
The group, which arrived late last week at the invitation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is separate from about a hundred other actual participants at the IAJ conference.
Since their arrival last Saturday, the international judicial professionals on the fringes of the conference have been busy visiting places of interest to their practice. Yesterday, a day before the conference closes, the international delegation took part in a tour of the Judicial Yuan and the Supreme Court.
During a briefing on the workings of Taiwan's judiciary, however, it became apparent that the visiting judges had become confused between the Judicial Yuan and the Supreme Court and raised a number of questions about both.
The Judicial Yuan, one of the five main branches of government in Taiwan (the other being the Executive, Legislative, Control and Examination Yuans) oversees the administration of the judiciary. It does not involve itself with the handing down of judgments in individual court cases.
The Supreme Court, on the other hand, is the court of final appeal for all civil and criminal cases. It does not decide questions of fact, only of legality, i.e. whether a judgment handed down by the High Court contravenes the law.
After officials from the Judicial Yuan took pains to explain about the different functioning of the two institutions, the professional judges apparently displayed a better understanding of the system. However, Justice Rosalia Jansen, a former director of the Training Institute for Judicial Professionals in the Netherlands, pointed out one of the difficulties in comparing international legal systems.
"Legal systems vary from one country to another, so it's almost impossible to compare them. To draw a clear picture of the system of a country, a number of things have to be taken into account, such as history, culture, and even legal language used to describe the system," Jansen said.
Despite such international differences, one common thread emerged: restricting the proliferation of court appeals is a universal objective of legal reform in countries where excessive caseloads have posed a burden on the judicial system.
For many years, Taiwan's judicial reforms have sought to alleviate the problem of excessive caseloads in the court system. Such has been the case also in Germany, according to Wolf Dieter Dressler, a justice of the Federal Supreme Court of Germany.
Aside from organizational matters, four major issues have been discussed: relations between the judiciary and the other authorities of the state, consequences of breach of contract, influence of the media upon integrity and freedom of opinion of members of the judiciary in criminal justice and the right to strike.
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