Legal experts yesterday said that the Constitution bars former grand justice Hsu Tzong-li (許宗力) from heading the Judicial Yuan, following reports that President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) was considering nominating him for the position.
National Taiwan University professor of law Chen Chih-lung (陳志龍) said that Hsu served as a grand justice from 2003 to 2011 — a mandated eight-year term — and an amendment to the Constitution prohibits an additional term.
In the Additional Articles of the Constitution, Article 5 says: “Each grand justice of the Judicial Yuan shall serve a term of eight years, independent of the order of appointment to office, and shall not serve consecutive terms. The grand justices serving as president and vice president of the Judicial Yuan shall not enjoy the guarantee of an eight-year term.”
Photo: Lo Pei-der, Taipei Times
“That article was part of an amendment to prevent grand justices from bowing to the wishes of political figures when making constitutional interpretations,” Chen said. “Hsu’s appointment to serve as a grand justice again is unconstitutional and it would be an international joke.”
The amendment says that the Judicial Yuan has 15 grand justices, while the president and vice president of the body are to be selected from among them, being “nominated and, with the consent of the Legislative Yuan, appointed by the president of the Republic” of China.
Presidential Office officials said they have consulted legal experts regarding the issue.
The appointment would be legal and there would be no breach of the Constitution in nominating Hsu, the officials said.
Hsu would be “reappointed,” not “serving consecutive terms,” which are two different concepts, they said.
Hsu was not continuing as a grand justice to serve for another term, because he retired from the post, the officials said. Academics and experts on constitutional law were consulted and they concurred that the move would not be a breach of Article 5, therefore the government will go ahead with Hsu’s nomination.
Tsai has faced a number of obstacles filling the Judicial Yuan’s presidency and No. 2 post, with her first picks, Public Functionary Disciplinary Sanction Commission Chief Commissioner Hsieh Wen-ting (謝文定) and Judicial Yuan Secretary-General Lin Chin-fang (林錦芳) withdrawing over past controversies.
NO RECIPROCITY: Taipei has called for cross-strait group travel to resume fully, but Beijing is only allowing people from its Fujian Province to travel to Matsu, the MAC said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday criticized an announcement by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism that it would lift a travel ban to Taiwan only for residents of China’s Fujian Province, saying that the policy does not meet the principles of reciprocity and openness. Chinese Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Rao Quan (饒權) yesterday morning told a delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers in a meeting in Beijing that the ministry would first allow Fujian residents to visit Lienchiang County (Matsu), adding that they would be able to travel to Taiwan proper directly once express ferry
FAST RELEASE: The council lauded the developer for completing model testing in only four days and releasing a commercial version for use by academia and industry The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) yesterday released the latest artificial intelligence (AI) language model in traditional Chinese embedded with Taiwanese cultural values. The council launched the Trustworthy AI Dialogue Engine (TAIDE) program in April last year to develop and train traditional Chinese-language models based on LLaMA, the open-source AI language model released by Meta. The program aims to tackle the information bias that is often present in international large-scale language models and take Taiwanese culture and values into consideration, it said. Llama 3-TAIDE-LX-8B-Chat-Alpha1, released yesterday, is the latest large language model in traditional Chinese. It was trained based on Meta’s Llama-3-8B
STUMPED: KMT and TPP lawmakers approved a resolution to suspend the rate hike, which the government said was unavoidable in view of rising global energy costs The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said it has a mandate to raise electricity prices as planned after the legislature passed a non-binding resolution along partisan lines to freeze rates. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers proposed the resolution to suspend the price hike, which passed by a 59-50 vote. The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) voted with the KMT. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT said the resolution is a mandate for the “immediate suspension of electricity price hikes” and for the Executive Yuan to review its energy policy and propose supplementary measures. A government-organized electricity price evaluation board in March
NOVEL METHODS: The PLA has adopted new approaches and recently conducted three combat readiness drills at night which included aircraft and ships, an official said Taiwan is monitoring China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) exercises for changes in their size or pattern as the nation prepares for president-elect William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. Tsai made the comment at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, in response to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu’s (王定宇) questions. China continues to employ a carrot-and-stick approach, in which it applies pressure with “gray zone” tactics, while attempting to entice Taiwanese with perks, Tsai said. These actions aim to help Beijing look like it has