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Senior judge says survey unfair and more evaluations should be launched

The Judicial Yuan refused to comment on a request by lawyers to officially evaluate judges following the release of a survey on Thursday showing that lawyers thought many judges were untrustworthy and had unprofessional attitudes.

A senior judge said the survey was not fair to judges.

The survey of 780 lawyers from the cities of Taipei, Tainan and Kaohsiung evaluated judges who had dealt with them individually in more than ten cases last year.

Lawyers at a press conference Thursday said that many judges they encountered were untrustworthy and some of them did not have the right attitude in court. They urged the government to conduct official evaluations on judges and pass a regulation requiring bad judges to retire.

Taipei District Court Chief Judge Lin Jiin-fang (林錦芳) said that she agreed with the lawyers' proposal that judges should be independently evaluated. But she also questioned the validity of Thursday's survey, released yesterday by the Judicial Reform Foundation.

"How can you judge a person and say he is not trustworthy just from your impression of him?" she said at a news conference yesterday. "I must say this survey can only be a reference instead of a document to be seriously considered because it is not precise.

"For example, we have more than 150 judges in the Taipei District Court. However, only 66 of them were evaluated by these lawyers. They failed to evaluate many of the worst judges and a lot of great judges because these judges did not deal with them in more than ten cases.

"Obviously, it is not fair to criticize the entire court with this survey since it was not complete."

She also said that some judges who lawyers said did not have the right attitude could have been misunderstood, and that they were simply trying to be more serious about the proceedings in court.

"Judges are human beings as well," she said.

"Different judges have different personalities. Some of them are more easy-going and smile or say things to relax everybody in court. But some of them are more serious and do not say anything unnecessary. These judges might be misinterpreted as having a bad attitude. Is this fair?

"I believe there are bad judges as well as bad lawyers," she said. "However, we should not forget that there are also hard-working judges and lawyers who deserve our respect."
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