On May 29, the Council of Grand Justices made the right decision by issuing Constitutional Interpretation No. 791, which declared that treating domestic disputes as a criminal offense is unconstitutional, instead defining such disputes as a civil matter.
Unfortunately, the ruling has been simplistically described as a matter of decriminalizing adultery, which is misleading.
In trial practice, the original article in the Criminal Code often became a protective umbrella for adultery, leading to absurd rulings that selectively punished one of the parties. They were not only a violation of gender equality, but also an encouragement to unethical lawyers who profited by taking advantage of the legal loophole.
From the perspective of legal consistency, Constitutional Interpretation No. 791 resolved the conflict between interpretations No. 554 and No. 748. However, psychologically, the ruling is reminiscent of the abolition of part of the Negotiable Instruments Act (票據法), as it would take some time for the public to realize that less government interference would actually reduce crime and disputes.
Examples of things turning out contrary to one’s wishes are common, and the “offense against the family” in the Criminal Code is one of them. For example, a former legislator once used this article as protection by asking his wife to file an adultery lawsuit against his mistress. He even took the witness stand to send his mistress to prison.
By doing so, he solved his “problem” and was even able to claim compensation from his mistress after winning the lawsuit, thus recouping what he had spent on her.
Did his wife win back her husband’s love? Did the law protect their family or did it increase the appetite of the scumbag who committed adultery?
When another of these scumbags found that his mistress wanted to break up with him, he confessed to his wife and asked her to file a lawsuit against his mistress, in effect treating her as a sex slave chained by the law. How could one party commit adultery on their own? The law must be founded on facts, but decisions in many such cases did not reflect reality.
Offenses against the family are a problem, but they are civil, domestic and humanistic problem, unrelated to public affairs, and require no government interference. The law often punished, humiliated and hurt one party in an act of adultery, causing even greater unfairness.
Based on the vicious adultery law, some unethical lawyers used to collude with criminal gangs to play “badger games” specifically against people with a high social or economic status. After the chairman of a listed company was tricked into having a meal with a saleswoman, he was blackmailed by her husband and lawyer.
Also, soon after former prosecutor-general Huang Shih-ming (黃世銘) took up his post in 2010, he arrested three presiding judges for corruption, and one of them was arrested for using the adultery law to cover for a criminal gang setting up honey traps.
Constitutional Interpretation No. 554 suppressed gender equality, while No. 748 promoted it. This conflict was resolved, as interpretation No. 791 overturned No. 554. Some economically or emotionally dependent people mistakenly believed that they could rely on the adultery law to protect their families, but they are just like those economically or emotionally dependent people in authoritarian states who think they can rely on a dictator to protect them.
The only way to protect our homes and country is to rely on true passion that comes from within and to promote a spirit of independence without being restricted by external forces.
Sean Wu is a retired professor.
Translated by Eddy Chang
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