Justice Lost: Grand Justices Consider as their Report Card "Declining to Take Up Judicial Review Cases"

  Justice Lost: Grand Justices Consider as their Report Card "Declining to Take Up Judicial Review Cases"

United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

August 21, 2018

 Translation of an Excerpt

What are the functions of Grand Justices? Basically they are "interpreting the Constitution" in judicial review cases. But the Grand Justices in this term [nine years] are different. If you ask them what their report card is, it is altogether a record of “not taking up judicial review cases.”

The Grand Justices of this term, with Hsu Tzong-li, President of the Judicial Yuan, appointed by Tsai Ing-wen, as the head, decided not to take up petitions for judicial review on constitutionality, creating a news effect of brouhaha in the outside world, and also eliciting disputes and criticism in society. With respect to the petition for judicial review on the constitutionality of the "Forward-looking Construction Program budget" submitted by opposition legislators, the grounds cited by the Grand Justices for not taking up the case were intriguing and far-fetched, being ridiculed by legal circles as "utterly unprecedented." With respect to the misgivings vis-à-vis the unconstitutionality of the "Statute Governing Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee," the Control Yuan petitioned for judicial review over a year ago, yet the Grand Justices have not entered it into their pending log, leaving a veteran journalist to lament "the Constitution is collapsing before our eyes."

Recently, petitions for judicial review over pension reforms came up one after another. Earlier there were four petitions submitted by 168 citizens; the Grand Justices resolved not to take them up. The most recent resolution not to take up the petition by the Grand Justices was related to six county and city governments, including Hualien, believing that "the petitions were not submitted through their superior government agency, hence lacked standing. Based on law, we could not say that the grounds were utterly fictitious; however, conversely the Grand Justices mired in legal provisions yet oblivious to jurisprudence, ignoring the question of contention that has aroused a social uproar, we don’t know whether this is the thinking of a “legal wonk” or an expert in making excuses? Or whether it is "politically correct" to the point of dereliction of duty?

The record of one after another “not taking up judicial review cases” by the Grand Justices has left obvious traces of political considerations that could be deemed as the worst since the lifting of martial law rule. The autocratic governance of the Tsai government has long been felt by various circles; however, have the Grand Justices been integrated to the level of "full control of government means total dictatorship"?

Weng Yueh-sheng, at the moment when he relinquished the post of the President of the Judicial Yuan, appealed in tears that judges must not be political tools and that political figures must not trample on the judiciary. That was a moving scene in the history of judicial reform; it was a commitment of the judiciary circle that "my heart is like a scale," it also conveyed expectations that "no admittance to politics." Hsu Tzong-li, Weng Yueh-sheng’s student, has now taken over the position of Judicial Yuan President; has he inherited his mentor’s spine? If Hsu Tzong-li asked himself, we don’t know what kind of answer he would give himself, but lamentably, there is already a fair public assessment in the outside!

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