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Lawmakers, legal experts urge more reform of Taiwan judicial practices

• Publication Date：03/15/2012
• Source： Taiwan Today
• By  June Tsai

The ROC government should continue to reform the nation’s judicial practices by implementing revisions to the Court Organic Act, according to Taiwan legislators and legal experts March 14.

“Merely targeting the controversial case assignment practice at the Supreme Court and Supreme Administrative Court is not enough to ensure that ‘dinosaur judges’ will become extinct,” said Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Yu Mei-nu, a lawyer, referring to judges who made insensitive decisions unfriendly to victims, particularly in sexual molestation cases.

Yu’s remarks follow the Ministry of Justice decision to abolish secret case assignment in the ROC Supreme and Supreme Administrative Courts beginning April 16. The system was introduced 62 years ago to ensure independent rulings at the final level of appeal, but has been criticized for lacking transparency.

More urgent issues for judicial reform, Yu said, entail reintroducing oral arguments in the Supreme Court and Supreme Administrative Court, making their trial proceedings public, and removing the binding power of their rulings.

“Mostly it is precedents set by the highest courts, which have binding power over lower courts, that have stopped junior judges from making good rulings,” said Lin Shih-fang, a lawyer and secretary-general of women’s rights group the Awakening Foundation.

“We need to review those precedents to see if they are unconstitutional or outdated by the contemporary situation,” she said. (THN)