ABSTRACT

This book examines Taiwan’s judicial reform process, which began three years after the 1996 transition to democracy, in 1999, when Taiwanese legal and political leaders began discussing how to reform Taiwan’s judicial system to meet the needs of the new social and political conditions. Covering different areas of the law in a comprehensive way, the book considers, for each legal area, problems related to rights and democracy in that field, the debates over reform, how foreign systems inspired reform proposals, the political process of change, and the substantive legal changes that ultimately emerged. The book also sets Taiwan’s legal reforms in their historical and comparative context, and discusses how the reform process continues to evolve.

part 1I|86 pages

Taiwan’s judicial reforms in comparative and historical context

chapter 1|21 pages

Taiwan’s judicial reform process

East Asian context, democratization, and diffusion

chapter 2|30 pages

The long century of Taiwan’s Westernized justice system

Historicizing the dynamics of her judicial reform of 1999

part 87II|116 pages

Institutional transformations

chapter 4|15 pages

Separation of the judiciary and the public prosecution

The cornerstone of judicial reform in Taiwan

chapter 5|23 pages

Regime unchanged

The organization and failed reorganization of Taiwan’s Judicial Yuan

chapter 6|22 pages

Reform and resistance

Restructuring Taiwan’s appeals process and the internal culture of Taiwan’s Supreme Court

chapter 7|20 pages

Adopting a lay participation system in Taiwan

The trial observer reform attempt

chapter 8|34 pages

Transformation from the top-down or bottom-up?

Legal education reform as a microcosm of Taiwan’s inconclusive judicial reform process

part 203III|84 pages

The procedural revolution

chapter 9|29 pages

Conscience and convenience

Taiwan’s rocky road to adopting the adversarial system in criminal procedure

chapter 11|20 pages

A leap forward not yet achieved

Civil procedure reform in Taiwan

chapter |6 pages

Afterword

President Tsai’s 2017 National Conference on Judicial Reform