The Legislative Yuan’s Judiciary and Organic Laws and Statutes Committee yesterday approved the first reading of an amendment, which, if passed, would see the creation of “civil attorneys” tasked with representing government agencies or public schools in legal disputes.
The amendment to the Attorney Regulation Act (律師法) was introduced to help address an increasing need for legal consultation in government agencies and public schools, and to implement policies detailed under the government’s judicial reforms, Minister of Justice Tsai Ching-hsiang (蔡清祥) said.
The system would allow government agencies and public schools to have a greater degree of trust, rather than seeking different lawyers on a case-by-case basis, Deputy Minister of Justice Huang Mou-hsin (黃謀信) said.
Photo: Hsieh Chun-lin, Taipei Times
As the go-to legal representative of their respective agency or school, the civil attorney would be intimately familiar with the affairs of the institution they represent, Huang said.
The dual role they play — as a member of staff at the institution and as a lawyer — would enforce attorney-client privilege, Huang added.
Attorneys in the newly created position must work at a government agency or public school, and would represent the institutions at which they work in the capacity of a lawyer, observing regulations as stipulated under the Civil Servant Service Act (公務員服務法), the Attorney Regulation Act and other ethical obligations, Tsai said, adding that they should join the local or nearby bar association.
Civil attorneys are banned from registering with other law firms, the amendment says.
They must also abide by the same regulations as members of the judiciary: avoiding conflicts of interest and not serving at a court, district prosecutors’ office, government agency or public school in which they have worked in the previous three years, the amendment says.
However, such lawyers can be commissioned by agencies or institutions in which they were previously employed to serve as a lawyer in other agencies or public schools.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS