The People Have Spoken: Taiwan's Fledgling Democracy Continues Towards Citizen Participation in the Judiciary

Taiwan’s current president, Tsai Ing-wen, was recently re-elected in a landslide in part due to her policies relating to China and maintaining Taiwanese democratic ideals. Taiwan remains a new and potentially unstable democracy, with its first competitive democratic elections occurring only in the 1990s and the constant threat of China’s growing power (especially in the wake of developments in Hong Kong). The 2020 elections marked the fourth peaceful transition of power, a step beyond the “two-turnover” test for democracies. However, elections alone do not define a democracy. As one author wrote: “freedom is not just gauged by periodic free elections, but also by the many ways that the government exerts its coercive power over individuals.”

In their book, American Juries: The Verdict, Vidmar and Hans emphasize the important role the jury held in the creation and sustainability of early American democracy. The jury system—placing peers between the government and its citizens—protected the people against government officials, helped ensure that “justice was kept in the hands of the people,” and “allowed the injection of local norms and values into legal disputes.” The authors go on to document how America’s early resistance to imperial rule largely took place through the jury system, which was “used to defy the broad institutions” of imperial governance in the colonies. Citizen participation essentially:

• provides citizens their most active and participatory opportunity to participate in the process of governing,
• allows for the voice of common sense and experience to impact a country’s developing law.

Taiwan currently suffers from a serious problem of distrust of their justice system. The young democracy certainly has room to celebrate civil and political rights victories, such as becoming the first country in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage. However, critics remind us that citizens remain concerned about the judiciary’s competence with respect to Taiwan’s freer culture. The new Taiwanese nickname for the arbiters of their justice system—“dinosaur judges”—captures their concerns about judges being out of touch with their society. Citizens fear that judges with ties to the authoritarian era, which ended only in the 1990s, cannot promote a fair system: they continue to document instances of judicial bias, incompetence, corruption, and general impropriety.

While the government proposed a draft citizen judge system in November 2019, a large alliance promoting the jury system still urges the government to implement a jury system and has planned a march for May 2020. Proponents of a jury system argue the system is necessary to allow the public’s collective wisdom to conduct fair trials. Regardless, recently re-elected President Tsai Ing-wen promised during her campaign to continue moving the Taiwanese judicial system toward one that incorporates its citizens in a meaningful way.

Since she was first elected in 2016, Tsai has rejected the one-China principle, which considers Taiwan a wayward province that must return—perhaps even by force—to the fold of the mainland. Tsai’s opponent in this most recent election advocated for closer ties with mainland China, arguing that easing tensions will boost and diversify Taiwan’s economy. However, Tsai won in a landslide due to the majority’s overwhelming fears of what warmer cross-strait relations could mean for the current Taiwanese democracy. The Taiwanese people have spoken: they plan to maintain their fledgling democracy despite the negative ramifications already felt from China.