Hundreds of lawyers of the Taiwan Bar Association and seven local bar associations on Saturday held a protest in Taipei against a proposed amendment to the Constitutional Court Procedure Act (憲法訴訟法), which they said would incapacitate the court and sabotage the nation’s liberal democratic constitutional order.
Under the amendments proposed by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Weng Hsiao-ling (翁曉玲), the act would be changed to specify that the “total number of incumbent justices” mentioned in the act means “15” — the courts full number of judges, while a two-thirds majority would be needed to issue a ruling.
The current law requires a simple majority — based on the number of judges present and participating in a deliberation — to pass a ruling, but under the amendments, a ruling would require the participation and approval of at least 10 justices.
Some people are worried that this higher threshold could cripple the court’s effectiveness.
Making the situation worse, the KMT and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) — which together hold a combined majority in the legislature — have been delaying the approval of seven new justices nominated by President William Lai (賴清德).
There are currently only eight incumbent justices, short of the proposed 10-member quorum, so if the amendments passed, the Constitutional Court would be paralyzed.
The Constitutional Court’s role is not only to clarify the separation of powers and resolve disputes between state agencies, but also to serve as a last resort for defending citizens’ fundamental rights.
The nation’s liberal democratic constitutional order would disintegrate if the court is incapacitated, the bar associations said on Saturday.
The lawyers also cited justice appointment mechanisms and constitutional court ruling requirements in other countries, including the quorum of justices and threshold for passing a ruling in the supreme courts of the US, Canada and Japan, as well as Germany’s Federal Court of Justice.
They said that while they all have a required minimum number of justices for passing a ruling, they also have mechanisms for avoiding a paralyzed court due to an inability to reach a quorum. For example, the US Supreme Court chief justice can assign cases to a circuit appeals court.
The lawyers raised concerns that Weng’s proposal makes passing constitutional rulings much more difficult, especially without a mechanism to avoid court incapacitation, which would surely pose a serious risk to the constitutional system.
TPP Legislator and former lawyer Vivian Huang (黃珊珊) in an article in the Chinese-language Contemporary Law Journal also opposed Weng’s proposal.
She said that Weng’s concerns are unfounded, as there were no rulings in which professional opinions were disregarded, and rulings made by a few justices are hardly possible in reality.
Weng on Friday stubbornly adhered to her view that the lawyers are only a minority of “Democratic Progressive Party supporters,” adding that the risk of paralyzing the court lies in Lai’s nomination of justices, not her proposed amendments.
While the draft amendments are still under review in cross-caucus discussions, the TPP’s stance would be critical, as it would be put to a floor vote if a consensus is not reached. After an internal meeting on Friday, the TPP caucus said it would propose its own amendment bill, which has not yet been revealed.
Although the KMT caucus has denied online reports that the next review of the bill is scheduled for tomorrow, people should continue to pay close attention and voice their concerns to local lawmakers.
If the amendment is passed, it would certainly affect their fundamental rights.
In the US’ National Security Strategy (NSS) report released last month, US President Donald Trump offered his interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine. The “Trump Corollary,” presented on page 15, is a distinctly aggressive rebranding of the more than 200-year-old foreign policy position. Beyond reasserting the sovereignty of the western hemisphere against foreign intervention, the document centers on energy and strategic assets, and attempts to redraw the map of the geopolitical landscape more broadly. It is clear that Trump no longer sees the western hemisphere as a peaceful backyard, but rather as the frontier of a new Cold War. In particular,
As the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) races toward its 2027 modernization goals, most analysts fixate on ship counts, missile ranges and artificial intelligence. Those metrics matter — but they obscure a deeper vulnerability. The true future of the PLA, and by extension Taiwan’s security, might hinge less on hardware than on whether the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) can preserve ideological loyalty inside its own armed forces. Iran’s 1979 revolution demonstrated how even a technologically advanced military can collapse when the social environment surrounding it shifts. That lesson has renewed relevance as fresh unrest shakes Iran today — and it should
The last foreign delegation Nicolas Maduro met before he went to bed Friday night (January 2) was led by China’s top Latin America diplomat. “I had a pleasant meeting with Qiu Xiaoqi (邱小琪), Special Envoy of President Xi Jinping (習近平),” Venezuela’s soon-to-be ex-president tweeted on Telegram, “and we reaffirmed our commitment to the strategic relationship that is progressing and strengthening in various areas for building a multipolar world of development and peace.” Judging by how minutely the Central Intelligence Agency was monitoring Maduro’s every move on Friday, President Trump himself was certainly aware of Maduro’s felicitations to his Chinese guest. Just
On today’s page, Masahiro Matsumura, a professor of international politics and national security at St Andrew’s University in Osaka, questions the viability and advisability of the government’s proposed “T-Dome” missile defense system. Matsumura writes that Taiwan’s military budget would be better allocated elsewhere, and cautions against the temptation to allow politics to trump strategic sense. What he does not do is question whether Taiwan needs to increase its defense capabilities. “Given the accelerating pace of Beijing’s military buildup and political coercion ... [Taiwan] cannot afford inaction,” he writes. A rational, robust debate over the specifics, not the scale or the necessity,
RSS