The Constitutional Court has a backlog of 354 public appeals still awaiting rulings while the court remains deadlocked.
On Friday last week, seven grand justice nominees selected by President William Lai (賴清德) were rejected by opposition lawmakers in the Legislative Yuan voting in the majority.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Wu Tsung-hsien (吳宗憲) said that the party’s caucus had decided to reject all the nominees, as they “lacked the courage to say no to the ruling party.”
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
In December last year, an amendment passed by legislature changed a requirement so that a minimum of 10 justices must be present to hear or rule on cases, and a minimum of nine justices must agree to an unconstitutional ruling.
The court currently has eight justices, after the terms of seven expired in October last year and the legislature blocked both rounds of nominations.
Legal experts have said that the law functionally shuts down the Constitutional Court until new justices are confirmed.
They have also reported hesitancy among those in the legal field from accepting a nomination from Lai, as both previous sets of nominees were rejected.
Statistics from the court show that as of June 30, there were 385 unresolved cases, of which 354, or 92 percent, were public appeals.
A further 21 cases were petitioned by judges, five by government agencies and the last five were brought by lawmakers.
For example, the court has accepted petitions from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus to rule on the recent amendments to the Constitutional Court Procedure Act (憲法訴訟法) and the central government budget.
The Executive Yuan has also requested judgements on the government’s budget and the Act Governing the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures (財政收支劃分法), which remain frozen along with the DPP’s petitions.
A controversial public petition awaiting constitutional redress is regarding the statute of limitations for sexual assault.
Statistics show that in the past 20 years, 1,097 plaintiffs have been unable to press charges due to the statute of limitations.
With the court frozen, it is unable to rule on the matter.
Other appeals from the public awaiting judgement include restrictions on adoption, overtime labor laws, pre-election polling and more.
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) today issued a sea warning for Typhoon Fung-wong effective from 5:30pm, while local governments canceled school and work for tomorrow. A land warning is expected to be issued tomorrow morning before it is expected to make landfall on Wednesday, the agency said. Taoyuan, and well as Yilan, Hualien and Penghu counties canceled work and school for tomorrow, as well as mountainous district of Taipei and New Taipei City. For updated information on closures, please visit the Directorate-General of Personnel Administration Web site. As of 5pm today, Fung-wong was about 490km south-southwest of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan's southernmost point.
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Tropical Storm Fung-Wong would likely strengthen into a typhoon later today as it continues moving westward across the Pacific before heading in Taiwan’s direction next week, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 8am, Fung-Wong was about 2,190km east-southeast of Cape Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan’s southernmost point, moving westward at 25kph and possibly accelerating to 31kph, CWA data showed. The tropical storm is currently over waters east of the Philippines and still far from Taiwan, CWA forecaster Tseng Chao-cheng (曾昭誠) said, adding that it could likely strengthen into a typhoon later in the day. It is forecast to reach the South China Sea
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