Article 14 Right to a Fair Trial

  1. Amendment 420 to the year 2015 Code of Criminal Procedure relaxed the rules on appeal so as to avoid miscarriages of justice. However, in addition to many factors outside the procedural code, such as peer pressure, blind respect for the law, and the burden of making an appeal, the actual practice of initiating an appeal continues to be hindered by the difficulties confronting alleged victims of wrongful prosecutions in opportunities to procure appeals. The legal process for relief (e.g., the right to examine the evidence, the right to legal representation, the right to a hearing, etc.) will continue to remain inadequate until such time as systemic reform.

  2. Efforts to reduce the number of wrongful prosecutions might take into account examples from other countries. References to such examples might consider the subsequent establishment of an independent extrajudicial criminal case review commission for the review of the merits for the appeal of a criminal judgment so as to avoid verdicts originating from a single judicial hearing as well as to sufficiently raise thresholds. For example, the United Kingdom, the United States of America (North Carolina) and Norway, striving for more objective neutrality in the review of criminal appeals, have all set up professional independent criminal case review commissions for the determination of whether a case should be appealed or not. Conviction integrity units established in prosecutor offices are also highly effective in ascertaining whether or not erroneous convictions of the innocent have occurred through the investigation of controversial criminal cases undertaken by prosecutors.

  3. Although Item 6 in Article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights provides for the compensation of persons found to have been erroneously convicted of a criminal offence, however if the innocent have yet to attain the effective means to redress judgments, even in systems where there exists a complete system for compensation, they will lack the means to put its use to effect. In order to ensure citizen rights against wrongful convictions, compensation must be accessible.

  4. The government is obliged to set up a more complete system for extraordinary relief in criminal proceedings (e.g., the establishment of review commissions) so as to ensure that the wrongly convicted innocent have more opportunities to procure appeals.

Mechanism for Supreme Court Case Review

  1. From 2002 to 2011, Taiwan's Supreme Court each year handled on average 572 formal petitions for interpretation of which the court each year on average rendered interpretations for about 16 cases (or interpretations for about 2.78% of all formal petitions during the period). More than 350 cases were not accepted for deliberation (about 61%), and, moreover, the 190+ cases making up the balance remained open (about 34%) (Su Yen-tu, 2013). In 2013 there were 553 new cases, 544 adjudicated cases and 9 interpretations; for 2014, 488 new cases, 522 adjudications and 10 interpretations; and, for 2015, 427 new cases, 385 adjudications and 8 interpretations, making for new lows in the percentage of interpretations to new cases. In comparison, figures for the United States Supreme Court during the same period from 2002 to 2011 show that for each term there were on average 79 full opinions, and for the Constitutional Court of Korea in the same period there were on average 151 full opinions per year.

  2. The vast majority of formal petitions are sooner or later rejected by Taiwan's Supreme Court. Of those rejected, the most common reasons given by the Supreme Court for rejection are: “petitioner failure to substantiate unconstitutionality”, or “mere personal opinions with vague accusations that fall short of forming objective legal reasons about the unconstitutionality of verdicts”, or other such statements. There may indeed be a rather large proportion of petitions, having already been dispatched by the Supreme Court justices for these reasons, that meet the criterion of other statutory procedures for formal petitions, but that are indeed frivolous cases not meriting acceptance by the Supreme Court. Solely from the available statistical legal data, we have no way to surmise what proportion of cases actually meet constitutional grounds or other procedural criteria, rather all that can be known is that the justices’ “rejection is in fact a rejection.”

  3. As a result, both academics and practitioners have criticized the non-transparency of the mechanism for selection of cases. Some courts still hold to the belief that all will be returned to the system of “secret case assignments.” In April of this year the Supreme Court threw out the more than 60-year practice of confidential case assignments whereby the principle writer of a verdict could hide behind a panel of five judges. The outside world should be enabled to publicly evaluate the quality of verdicts and pursue accountability so as to put appropriate pressure on both the panels of judges and presiding justices. However the reasons for Supreme Court explanations or rejections are still hidden behind a 15 person panel, especially those for which there is no resolution or for which the judge commonly “vaguely accuses” the petitioner’s formal petitions of “vagueness in its accusations”. The courts and justices do not venture to take the risk of providing outside reviewers with public petition records or identities of presiding justices. Moreover, those lawyers who have applied for constitutional interpretation but been rejected have stated about the constitutionality of Taiwan’s Code of Criminal Procedures Article 388 for second petitions that, due to the complete unacceptability of rejection decisions by justices, civic bodies have made decisions to assist individual defendants in the re-submission of appeal petitions for constitutional interpretations, however such petitions till this day have stayed lost in a bureaucratic sea.

  4. The Ministry of Justice in response to citizen expectations in 2013 proposed draft amendments which included rules in Article 31 on the elucidation of reasons for decisions to reject and, moreover, the standardization of appeal time limits for appeals. However, this seems not to be the best means for resolution of the issue.

  5. Overall, the mechanisms for the hearing of cases in the courts of various countries, e.g., the United States Supreme Court and the German Federal Constitutional Court, are, in fact, also not transparent with more than half done at the discretion of each said judicial court level. Nevertheless, the mechanism of Taiwan’s Supreme Court for the hearing of cases is not without areas that are in need of reform .

  6. Scholars further consider the following:

    1. legalization of the hearing process for cases does not indicate that policy determination for the selection of Supreme Court cases should be restrained by stricter rules. In a system that maintains that the "Supreme Court be required to elucidate the reasons for the rejection of petitions to hear cases," the Continuation or further codification of "indications of no reason", "lack of significant constitutionality," and other such existing practices, is not only unsupportive of efforts to raise the level of consistency and predictability in case selection determinations by the Supreme Court, but also leads to abrupt deteriorations in the partnering relationships between petitioners and the Supreme Court, and even to displays of hypocrisy.

    2. If problems occur in the setting of judicial political agendas, then comparatively effective reform strategies should be leveraged, i.e., "harnessing judicial politics to fix judicial politics." In addition to augmenting the public disclosure of the Supreme Court's case selection process, and making the Supreme Court's determination of case selection subject to more examination and fairness, assigning a fixed proportion of a minority of accepted Supreme Court cases the right to set the agenda is also a reform measure very much worthy of consideration.

Issues regarding the bar association (in reply of State Report Paragraph 237)

  1. Paragraph 237 of this State Report only quotes Paragraph 204 of the initial State Report, which briefly introduces number of meetings and election methods. However, the regulation of registration in the Attorney Regulation Act is rare and create barriers for their practice.

  2. According to Article 11 Paragraph 1 in the Attorney Regulation Act, “An attorney at law is not entitled to practice until he/she has become a member of a Bar Association.” Paragraph 2 notes that bar associations should be formed within the geographical jurisdiction of a district court. Therefore, there are 16 bar associations around the country, and a lawyer has to join a a bar association according to the district court they wish to practice law in. In other words, if a lawyer wants to practice all around the country, he has to join all 16 bar associations.

  3. The membership fees are freely decided by bar associations. The membership fee is usually collected at the time of registration, and there is also a monthly fee. According calculations made in 2015, the total fee for a lawyer to join all bar associations is NT$446,300, with a total monthly fee of NT$9,120 - although some bar associations give discount to lawyers who register across areas, so this is calculated by the discounted rate. This is quite a burden to lawyers, especially newly-practicing lawyers whose incomes are around NT$50,000 per month. They can usually register in one or two district bar association and have to give up the chance to be appointed by clients from other areas. Relatively, people in rural or remote areas, where less lawyers are registered, would have less options when choosing their defenders.

  4. In nearby countries such as China, Japan and South Korea, lawyers can practice around the country after they register in one bar association. There’s no management reason to make a lawyer register in every district bar association. Plus, receiving sufficient assistance from lawyers is an important factor of the right to a fair trial in Article 14 of the ICCPR. The regulations on bar associations and their operation have overly restricted the right to practice of lawyers, and they should be revised.

Presumption of innocence

  1. In reference to Article 6 Paragraphs 120 & 121 in the Shadow Report, it talks about the phenomenon of “trial by media”, as in the case of Hsieh Yi-han.

The right to be heard

  1. In reference to Article 6 Paragraphs 122 to 125, it talks about the right to be heard in death penalty cases.

The system of no appeal after innocence in the first instance and guilty in the second instance

  1. In Point 65 of the 2013 Concluding Observations and Recommendations, and Article 14 Paragraph 5 of the ICCPR, people who are convicted of a crime shall have the right to his conviction and sentence being reviewed by a higher tribunal according to law. In practice, Article 376 of the Code of Criminal Procedure regulates that certain cases are not appealable to the court of third instance, and there is no chance for appeal, which goes against Article 14 Paragraph 5 of the ICCPR. The professionals suggest that Article 376 of the Code of Criminal Procedure should be revised so that everyone who is judged not guilty in the court of first instance, but guilty in the second instance, shall be able to appeal to the court of third instance.

  2. Paragraph 259 of the State Report has pointed out that certain cases which are judged guilty are not appealable to the court of upper instance, and the Judicial Yuan has already investigated the revision of the laws that delete Article376 and revise Article 377. However, according to the statistics from the State Report, there are still almost 300 cases per year judged not guilty in the first instance, but proven guilty in the second instance since 2012, which proves that our country is still going against the ICESCR and the ICCPR. Hence, before the laws are revised, the court should follow Article 3 of the Act to Implement the ICCPR and the ICESCR, and grant the chance to appeal according to the intention of the ICCPR and the interpretation of the UN Human Rights Committee. However, according to Supreme Court Verdict no. 216 in 2014 and no. 4532 in 2013, both cases were judged not guilty in the first instance but guilty in the second instance. Both defendants claimed the existing laws violated the ICCPR and made an appeal to the court of third instance. However, the Supreme Court dismissed the appeals, also disregarding the demands of the ICCPR and the ICESCR. Such violations are still ongoing.

  3. Regarding the current Article 376 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which is against the right to appeal in the ICCPR, not only are the legislators obliged to amend the laws, the court also has the obligation to consider the ICCPR, and implement it in judgments before the amendment of laws.

Judicial interpretation

  1. According to Article 14 Paragraph 3 and General Comment no. 32 of the UN Human Rights Council, a criminal defendant should have free assistance of an interpreter. This is related to the principles of just and equal rights in a criminal trial, and it is not only applicable in all phases of criminal cases, but also to those cases where foreigners are involved with crimes.

  2. As the number of foreigners entering the country has rapidly increased in recent years, the number of cases that involve foreigners has gone up as well. Therefore, it is very important that our government provides the minimum protection for foreign defendants, such as sufficient interpretation assistance (provided by the judicial system) , the brief of the case, and a full explanation of the trial. Take for examplethe well-known, 2013 fishing boat murder case of Te Hung Hsing (No. 368). When the 9 Indonesian defendants were investigated in the Prosecutor's Office, the prosecutor assigned an Indonesian spouse who married a Taiwanese person as the interpreter. But there were problems like a lack of understanding of the case, and their poor grasp on legal terms. After the case was brought to court, the judge interrogated the 8 defendants at the same time, but the court only assigned a Malaysian interpreter for them. Although their languages are similar, it is still questionable if the key terms could be fully conveyed and understood. During the trial, the judge, the prosecutor and the defendants had to communicate frequently, but the interpreter was too busy to translate every detail, which affected the defendants’ rights to participate in and understand the content of the trial. Worst of all, the court only assigned one interpreter at first, and due to the number of defendants and the complications of the case, the interpreter was soon overloaded, which forced the court to assign another interpreter as an assistant. After countless trials, the interpretation went smoother, but the right to a fair trial was still violated during the first half. It also indicates that the court was totally unaware of the basic concept that interpretation is the minimum protection of a defendant’s rights. The fact that the whole procedure had to adjust along with the trial shows that interpretation has been considered a non-important issue in the judicial reform, and the right to a fair trial for foreigners is easily violated.

  3. Although the competent authorities of the Judicial Yuan and the Ministry of Justice have started training sessions for legal interpretation professionals, and recruited official and specially employed interpreters in all courts and prosecution offices, the number of interpreters and languages available is still severely inadequate. For example, the number of cases which needed interpreters from January to September 2015 was over 6000, but there were only 90 officially employed, and 244 specially employed interpreters, which shows a huge gap between the supply and demand. Also, interpreters obviously do not have the time or capability to understand the details of all cases they’re in charge of. The problem of insufficient interpreters also exists in the courts and offices in non-urban areas and the languages of defendants are rarely used (e.g. Arabic, Russian, Turkish). When trials have opened and no interpreters could come, there were cases where the defenders served as interpreters, or the defendants brought their own interpreters to trial. This is clearly against the “neutrality and objectivity of an interpreter” rules in the Court Organic Act and procedure acts. Moreover, the right to have the free assistance of an interpreter protected in Article 14 Paragraph 3 of the ICCPR should include all phases of a criminal case. Since there are many cases that won’t even go to prosecution or court, the amount of criminal cases is like a pyramid, and most cases stay in the police investigation stage. However, the Ministry of Justice has long ignored interpretation in investigation processes. Many foreign defendants have their first interrogation in a police station without interpretation. If the process is flawed in the beginning, the trial afterwards stands on a fragile foundation.

  4. Finally, the Judicial Yuan and Ministry of Justice have set up “Operational Regulation Governing the Use of Interpreters of Courts and Instructions for Prosecution Offices Using Interpreters in Criminal Cases”. However, such executive orders are too brief and only deal with the administrative process. There is still no explicit rule or operational regulation to protect the right to interpretation for foreigners. Issues that should be addressed include the training of officially and specially employed interpreters, the threshold of authentication, examination and assessment, the allocation of interpreters, and rewards and travel allowance that would affect the performance of interpreter.

  5. Therefore, the government should not only focus on the training and assessment of interpreters, but also consider setting a specific law, and establishing competent institutions for judicial interpreters, so that the covenant right to interpretation for foreigners can be fulfilled.

  6. For the protection of fair trials and to reassure the neutral role of the interpreter, “an interpreter should take the initiative to report to the court if there is any cause for refusal of interpretation or a conflict of interest, as well as of there is any reason that may potentially affect the faithfulness or neutrality of an interpreter performing duties.” (Article 8 of the Code of Conduct for Court Interpreters). Article 10 also states: “an interpreter shall not accept solicitation or other favors, or receive improper benefits, and shall avoid making any unnecessary contact with parties, witnesses, expert witnesses or other relevant parties.” In Article 25 of Code of Criminal Procedure, it says that “the provisions of this chapter relating to the disqualification of a judge (Article 17 Paragraph 6) shall apply mutatis mutandis to a court clerk or interpreter,” which indicates that the interpreter should disqualify himself from a case if it concerns his own motions. However, for a judicial interpreter who speaks the same language as the defendant (who is also from the same country as the defendant) and not only keeps contact with parties outside the court, but also stands as a witness to address the case, his conversation with the defendant could be evidence to prove the defendant guilty in court.

  7. By law, it is not neutral for a witness to also act as an interpreter, and it is difficult to see how duties could be executed “fairly” in such instances. It is against the justness of the interpreter to contact a defendant outside the court, and it is directly against the law of the “disqualification of the interpreter”. Particularly in the courts of Taiwan, unless there are many defendants or it is a significant case, there are usually less than two judicial interpreters in the court. When a trial is lacking an assistant interpreter to reassure the accuracy of an interpretation, it can hardly be deemed “fair”.

Improve Interpretation Services

  1. The government should perform a thorough review on the need for various types of interpretation services both within individual agencies and in an interagency setting, and establish a comprehensive set of standard operating procedures for each type of interpretation services, as well as rules securing interpreters’ labor rights. Budgets should be allocated, in accordance with Article 7 of Taiwan’s Act to Implement the ICCPR and ICESCR, to create comprehensive training and certification standards for different forms of interpretation services, as well as service quality evaluations and proofreading mechanism for translated judicial documents. Meanwhile, budgets should also be allocated specifically for translation of judicial proceeding documents, in order to ensure the right to a fair trial for those who do not understand the language used in these proceedings.

  2. There is no clear and uniform mandate among government agencies for the allocation of sufficient budgets to train, provide and manage interpretation services, and various agencies have their own regulations regarding the provision of interpretation services. As a result, central government agencies, local governments, the police and the legal aid system often find themselves short on interpretation capacity. In addition, since there is no comprehensive interpretation system within the central government, the following issues are prevalent in practice for interpretation services60: unreasonably low wages, insufficient regulations on duty of recusal, insufficient protection on personal safety, ambiguous application requirements and procedures.

  3. As prescribed by Articles 9, 13 and 14 of ICCPR61, the State shall not violate the people’s right to liberty and security of person, nor the right to a fair trial. UN’s CCPR General Comment No. 3262 also notes that the State must provide free interpretation or translation of related documents. Therefore, interpretation serves not only to ensure the defendant’s right to defend, it also directly affects the party’s rights to life, to liberty and property, as well as personality rights in matters such as medicine and household registration, among others. Taiwan’s lack of a comprehensive interpretation system is not only inconsistent with ICCPR, but also a violation of the due process principle in a modern legal state.

Right of Access to Files

  1. Paragraph 255 of the State report only refers to Paragraph 219 of the initial report, which briefly explains Article 33 of the Code of Criminal Procedure: that the defender may examine the case file and exhibits during trial, and a defendant without a defender may request provision of copies of the written records in the file. However, given the progress in technology and court resources, there is currently no need to place such restrictions on the defendants’ right of access to files.

  2. The ratio legis of Article 33 of the Code (as amended in 2007), which limits the defendants’ access to copies of the written records and not the entire case file, is to lower the cost on case file protection (by keeping defendants from damaging exhibits), and that on escorting defendants under custody to the courthouse for such access. However, to restrict the defendants’ rights of access to related documents and exhibits on such consideration alone constitute an inappropriate restriction to the defendants’ rights to defend and to a fair trial.

  3. Furthermore, a pilot electronic documents and exhibits system, which scans and presents documents and exhibits digitally to the greatest possible extent, is already available at a number of courts in Taiwan. Should this system prove viable, all considerations on the costs of case file protection and defendants’ escort, as mentioned above, would no longer exist, and courts should provide the defendants with full access to electronic copies of documents and exhibits to the defendants so they may understand the grounds of the charges against them and how to defend themselves. Thus, appropriate amendments should be made to the obsolete Article 33 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, and the Judicial Yuan should also expedite implementation of the electronic documents and exhibits system at all courts.

Criminal Defendants’ Right to Request Investigation of Evidence/the State’s Negligence in Evidence Custody

  1. Paragraph 3(e), Article 14 of ICCPR stipulates that defendants should be guaranteed the rights to examine the witnesses against him and to obtain the attendance and examination of witnesses on his behalf. This originates from procedural guarantee principles, such as that of presumption of innocence, due process and equality of arms, and should be interpreted to mean that, by extension, defendants should have the right to investigate both the evidence against him, and that in his favor. (The section on ICCPR’s Article 14 in UN’s Guidelines for the treaty-specific document to be submitted by States parties asks States to indicate if guarantee exists with regard to access to documents and other evidence). Corresponding to the defendants’ rights above, the State has the obligation to keep evidence under its substantial disposal in proper custody, so to ensure that defendants may be found not guilty via the court’s investigation, and to prevent contaminated evidence from being used as basis for guilty verdicts.

  2. However, custody of evidence, and its management procedures and system, have never received its due attention, and related regulations remain hollow words. For example, almost every miscarriage of justice, overturned or are currently addressed by civil groups, involves evidence lost or contaminated. Examples include the knife in ChienHe Su’s case, the recording tape in HeShun Chiu’s case, the crime scene forensics video recording and bullet projectile in SingTze Cheng’s case, and the DNA sample in JingKai Lu’s case. In Lu’s case, National Taiwan University Hospital’s forensics report indicated that the sample examined did not match the defendant’s DNA. While the court had excluded this evidence in favor of the defendant as “contaminated during transfer”, other DNA samples similarly “contaminated during transfer” were still used as the basis for the guilty verdict. Worse still, several years later Chiu and his attorney had discovered new evidence and requested another DNA profiling with scientific method that was more sophisticated, only to be told by the prosecution that all case evidence had been destroyed hence no further testing was possible. Such gross State negligence in evidence custody, as well as on presumption of innocence and on due process is bewildering, let alone that Lu’s case above is only the tip of the iceberg among numerous other victims of miscarriages of criminal justice. While Control Yuan’s investigation has also indicated faults in evidence custody and management, and has demanded improvements from Judicial Yuan and Ministry of Justice, no substantive action has been observed, and neither does the State report make any mention of this matter.

  3. In this respect, civil groups have been urging the State to explain current evidence custody procedures and improvements made to them, and to study possible reliefs for criminal defendants subject to unfavorable verdicts due to State negligence of evidence custody.

The Role of Judicial Yuan should be Reviewed as Soon as Possible and Adjusted towards a “Unified, Single-Track” Structure in Accordance with J.Y. Interpretation 530, as Consistent with Constitutionalism

  1. This section responds to Paragraph 229 of the State report. According to Article 77 of the Constitution, Judicial Yuan shall be the highest judicial organ of the State and shall have charge of civil, criminal, and administrative cases, and over cases concerning disciplinary measures against public functionaries. However, under the current Judicial Yuan Organization Act, it is not directly in charge of the above proceedings. This creates a separation between the highest adjudicative organ and the highest judicial administrative organ. The role of Judicial Yuan is the core issue to Taiwan’s judicial reforms. In this regard, Judicial Yuan had organized the National Judicial Reforms Meeting in July, 1999, and published the meeting’s conclusions and reforms timeline on 26 July the same year, which declares that the role of Judicial Yuan shall be adjusted towards a “unified, multi-track” structure (where individual courts within Judicial Yuan are responsible for constitutional interpretations and adjudication) in the near-term, and towards a “unified, single-track” structure (where thirteen to fifteen justices within Judicial Yuan have charge of civil, criminal, and administrative cases, and over constitutional interpretations, as well as cases concerning disciplinary measures against public functionaries, and that concerning dissolution of unconstitutional political parties) as the ultimate goal. This would make Judicial Yuan a de facto adjudicative organ consistent with the Constitution.

  2. In addition to the conclusions of the 1999 Meeting, justices have also interpreted their own role in the form of Interpretation 530 published on 5 October 2001. The Interpretation noted that under the current Judicial Yuan Organization Act, Judicial Yuan shall establish every level of judicial court, Administrative Court, and the Public Functionary Disciplinary Sanction Commission. This Interpretation would have Judicial Yuan functions only as the highest judicial administrative organ in addition to justices in charge of constitutional and unified judiciary interpretations and convening of Constitutional Courts that adjudicate matters relating to the dissolution of unconstitutional political parties, thereby creating a separation between the highest adjudicative organ and the highest judicial administrative organ. The Interpretation also asks that the Judicial Yuan Organization Act, the Court Organic Act, the Administrative Court Organization Act, and the Organic Act of Commission on the Disciplinary Sanction of Functionaries be amended within two years of the Interpretation’s publication in order to comply with the ratio legis of the Constitution that places Judicial Yuan as the highest adjudicative organ. Judicial Yuan approved the draft amendments of the three Acts on 16 May 2006, which would achieve the above. However, KMT’s boycott and the discontinuation of agenda between legislative sessions, have led to the lack of progress on reforms of Judicial Yuan’s role.

  1. This section responds to Paragraph 238 of the State report. The people’s participation to the exercise of judiciary power is a realization of the principle of democracy in a constitutional State. The people, as the source of the State’s sovereignty, have the right to participate in the exercise of judiciary power. This is an important feature of “judicial democratization”. The core of lay participation is to introduce varying empirical rules and ideas of justice from people of diverse backgrounds into fact recognition and application of laws in judicial judgments, and to enable people’s participation in the operation of the legal system. Through such transparency, this would prevent judges from having sole power in trials and abusing judicial discretion, and would prevent judicial judgments from severe disconnection with social experiences, thereby increasing people’s confidence in these judgments.

  2. Since the legal system was used as a means of oppression during the authoritarian period, as is had not protected the people from being violated by the State and had appeared in the form of perpetrator, the people’s trust in the legal system have been poor since that time. In addition, those in power had neglected corruption in the legal system as long as it serves the purpose as a means of oppression. For this reason, the saying “life to the powerful, death to the powerless” under the legal system has long prevailed since the authoritarian period. In this respect, if the people’s impression of the legal system is to be overturned, its image as a State apparatus should be dispelled, hence the necessity for the introduction of lay participation, which would return the legal system to the service of the people and thereby reverse its image and reestablish its credibility.

  3. The “lay judge system” established by Judicial Yuan in 2011 contradict many principles of a legal State. And, based on the Bar Association’s participation in many mock trials, the system, which allows for only expressions of intent but not for voting, is not effective as an instrument to realize lay participation.

  4. Judging by courts’ implementation of the lay judge system in mock trials, the State has indeed invested a substantial amount of human and financial resources. To achieve a good institution for lay participation, this report suggests future adjustments in the direction of the similar lay judge system in Japan, in order to establish truly effective lay participation in the legal system.

  1. Agenda Related Document of the 2nd sitting of Ninth Legislative Yuan’s 1st session, dated 11 December 2015
  2. Articles 9, 13 and 14 of ICCPR
  3. Paragraph 40 of UN’s CCPR General Comment No. 32

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