The long-standing problem of Taiwan’s “dinosaur judges” finally saw some light in July last year when amendments to the Judges Act (法官法) allowed the public to directly request that judges’ and prosecutors’ competency be evaluated.
The amended act ordered the Judicial Yuan to establish the Judicial Evaluation Committee for judges, and the Judicial Personnel Review Committee to evaluate their appointments, removals and transfers.
Under the new system, which was hailed by some as a milestone in judicial reform, if the pertinent evaluation committee found that a punishment was warranted, the case would go straight to the Court of the Judiciary without passing through the Control Yuan. The law also increased the percentage of academics and neutral civilian representatives on each committee.
With further amendments passed last month, all such hearings, with some exceptions, would be open to the public. This makes sense due to allegations that officials were covering for each other behind closed doors.
All of this sounds great on paper — the public is empowered to push back against dinosaur judges — and people did take up the government’s offer. Members of the public filed 622 complaints in the past year requesting evaluations of judges or prosecutors — 30 times more than in years prior to the amendments.
However, last week, the Judicial Reform Foundation said that not one of the complaints was successful.
Instead of reflecting on what to improve, the Judicial Yuan denied that the process does not work, saying that one year is too short to evaluate it. People have mistaken the evaluation system for a complaints platform, it said, adding that many people request to evaluate a judge’s legal opinions instead of their conduct, while other petitions were groundless, repetitive, filed anonymously and so on.
One problem with allowing people to freely request evaluations is that there will inevitably be invalid petitions filed — but all of them? That seems impossible. This news will definitely cause the public’s low confidence in the judicial system to plummet more.
A survey in February by National Chung Cheng University showed that public trust in the nation’s judges had dropped to 26.7 percent. At the time, the hot topics were the acquittal of the murderer of Lee Cheng-han (李承翰), a 25-year-old railway officer, and a corruption scandal involving former Supreme Court judge Shih Mu-chin (石木欽) and businessman Weng Mao-chung (翁茂鍾) that implicated 200 judicial and government officials.
With such mistrust and long-brewing resentment toward the justice system, people are unlikely to accept the Judicial Yuan’s explanations. Transparency regarding what really happened with the 622 petitions is needed. For example, the Judicial Reform Foundation suggested that the Judicial Yuan compile all of the petitions and the evaluation proceedings in an annual report.
If so many people do not understand what constitutes punishable conduct by judges, the committees should increase public awareness and ensure that valid petitions are not simply dismissed due to some technical error.
Taiwanese have had to cope with incompetent judges and prosecutors for long enough, and the judiciary still faces a steep climb to regain public trust, despite the government’s efforts to reform the system.
What is the point of opening judicial hearings to the public if none of the petitions was accepted? The problem needs to be fixed at the source, with transparency regarding what happened to the past year’s petitions being just the start.
A series of strong earthquakes in Hualien County not only caused severe damage in Taiwan, but also revealed that China’s power has permeated everywhere. A Taiwanese woman posted on the Internet that she found clips of the earthquake — which were recorded by the security camera in her home — on the Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu. It is spine-chilling that the problem might be because the security camera was manufactured in China. China has widely collected information, infringed upon public privacy and raised information security threats through various social media platforms, as well as telecommunication and security equipment. Several former TikTok employees revealed
For the incoming Administration of President-elect William Lai (賴清德), successfully deterring a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) attack or invasion of democratic Taiwan over his four-year term would be a clear victory. But it could also be a curse, because during those four years the CCP’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) will grow far stronger. As such, increased vigilance in Washington and Taipei will be needed to ensure that already multiplying CCP threat trends don’t overwhelm Taiwan, the United States, and their democratic allies. One CCP attempt to overwhelm was announced on April 19, 2024, namely that the PLA had erred in combining major missions
The Constitutional Court on Tuesday last week held a debate over the constitutionality of the death penalty. The issue of the retention or abolition of the death penalty often involves the conceptual aspects of social values and even religious philosophies. As it is written in The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay, the government’s policy is often a choice between the lesser of two evils or the greater of two goods, and it is impossible to be perfect. Today’s controversy over the retention or abolition of the death penalty can be viewed in the same way. UNACCEPTABLE Viewing the
At the same time as more than 30 military aircraft were detected near Taiwan — one of the highest daily incursions this year — with some flying as close as 37 nautical miles (69kms) from the northern city of Keelung, China announced a limited and selected relaxation of restrictions on Taiwanese agricultural exports and tourism, upon receiving a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) delegation led by KMT legislative caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅崑萁). This demonstrates the two-faced gimmick of China’s “united front” strategy. Despite the strongest earthquake to hit the nation in 25 years striking Hualien on April 3, which caused