As seven seats on Taiwan's Constitutional Court sit empty, new amendments changing the rules of the court could leave it immobilized. TaiwanPlus speaks with Dr. Yen-tu Su at Academia Sinica to learn more about how the new rules could affect the court and if those seven seats will ever be filled.
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00:00These new amendments have not yet gone into effect yet, but they were very controversial when they were passed.
00:06Do we see any other branches of government trying to put a stop to them?
00:10The very constitutionality of these amendments are questionable or are at issue at this time.
00:17And so many people are trying to figure out ways for the court to review
00:23the very constitutionality of this amendment.
00:27And now we can expect that the executive might probably propose the reconsideration of this amendment in 10 days after it received the bill.
00:38But once the reconsideration process is finished, the president will probably still promulgate this amendment.
00:48But soon the controversy will go directly to the constitutional court.
00:54And the constitutional court can try to figure out ways to review the constitutionality of these amendments.
01:02But if they try to make a ruling on constitutionality with the current number of justices only eight, that's not enough to make a ruling.
01:09Does that mean that it would just be stuck?
01:12Taiwan constitutional court, unfortunately, is not the only constitutional court facing this kind of challenge.
01:19So back in 2015, the Poland Constitutional Tribunal also faced this kind of attack on the constitutional court.
01:30And they developed a jurisprudence trying to explain why the court is not bound by this kind of rule manipulation and can still maintain its role in overseeing the constitutionality of law.
01:48But certainly we would expect lots of controversy here.
01:52And many people will just criticize the court for not following the new rules.
01:58It's quite unfortunate that the Taiwan constitutional court is further mired in the political controversy here.
02:06And certainly its authority will be attacked and eroded further on.
02:12On Tuesday, we saw the legislature reject all seven of President Lai Ching-tau's judicial nominees.
02:18Have you ever seen this before in the legislature?
02:20What happened with the picks there?
02:22And what can we predict going forward with Lai's next round of nominees?
02:28Well, what happened yesterday was indeed a tragedy in Taiwan.
02:33It might go down to a sad day in Taiwan's history, because all seven nominees to the constitutional court were rejected by purely partisan party line votes.
02:48I mean, that said, it's bad politics, it's petty politics, and all sides are playing politics.
02:55And that means that it will further politicize the judicial selection process to the court.
03:01And it will certainly affect the impartiality and independence of the court.
03:06So President Lai already said that he regret the result, but he will continue to nominate new justices to the court.
03:15But most of the seven nominees he nominated last time were considered fine jurists, fine lawyers, constitutional lawyers or criminal lawyers in Taiwan.
03:28And we still have people who are qualified to sit on the court.
03:32But you might sense some hesitation among the potential nominees, because once they accept the nomination, it means that they will be subject to this kind of unfair treatment.
03:44by the legislator.
03:46And so I think that that would be bad for Taiwan in the long run, because it would discourage many competent, qualified jurists to serve on the court.