Justices Cai Zongzhen, Yang Huiqin and Zhu Fumei refused to participate in the deliberation for more than 300 days. They had repeatedly issued "disagreeing legal opinions" after relevant judgments. The extra word "law" cleverly avoided the restriction that they could not submit formal "dissenting opinions" without participating in the deliberation. The three people published the article in "Taiwan Legal Person" and authorized "Fayuan Law Network" to obtain royalties. However, they still used the title of chief justice and used terms such as "this position", making it difficult for the outside world to distinguish whether the legal opinions were private or the chief justice's.
After verification and inquiries by this newspaper, the legal source has removed from the shelves the legal opinions previously issued by the three justices; after the Constitutional Court announced the latest judgment last week, the three justices have not issued separate opinions as in the past. It is understood that some members of the judiciary have sent a letter to report, questioning the legal opinions issued by the three people, which have involved disputes over judicial ethics and copyright property rights, requesting that a self-discipline meeting be considered and handed over to the political conduct unit for investigation; the Constitutional Court Secretariat recently responded to the letter stating that it will forward the report to the justice.
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The three justices refused to participate in the deliberations due to the "5 to 3" split in the Constitutional Court. The Legislative Yuan previously amended the "Constitutional Procedure Law" to require at least 10 justices to participate in the review and 9 to agree to declare it unconstitutional, but at that time there were only 8 justices left. Cai, Yang and Zhu believed that the legal threshold was not reached and refused to participate; the other five people issued the "114-year Constitutional Judgment No. 1" judgment last year, declaring the amendment to be unconstitutional. Since then, the three people have not participated in the review, and have issued separate legal opinions after the announcement of many judgments.
According to the opinion system of the Constitutional Procedure Law, if the justices participate in the deliberation and have different opinions on the main text or reasons of the judgment, they can submit a formal "dissenting opinion" in accordance with the law. Cai, Yang, and Zhu did not participate in the review and were unable to submit a formal dissent. The "disagreement legal opinion" issued later was a personal legal opinion outside the adjudication process. The only difference between the two names is the word "law", but their legal nature is different.
Take the "115-Year Constitutional Judgment No. 6" produced on August 14 this year as an example. The "Opinion" column of the judgment on the official website of the Constitutional Court only contains the joint opinion of Justice Lu Tailang and Cai Caizhen; Cai Zongzhen, Yang Huiqin, and Zhu Fumei did not participate in the review, and later jointly submitted a 64-page "Legal Opinion of Disagreement" to the outside world.
This newspaper previously checked the Fayuan Law Network and found that this 64-page document was included in "Legal Treatises". You must pay 256 points to download the full text, with 1 point equivalent to 1 yuan. The source of the data is marked as "provided by the author", the "editors and translators" are listed as Cai, Yang, and Zhu, and the "authorized persons" are also listed as three persons respectively.
This is not the only similar situation. The legal source has also included documents such as the "Legal Opinion Disagreeing with the 115-Year Constitutional Court No. 4 Judgment", which was also jointly submitted by Cai, Yang, and Zhu, and was included in paid treatises. Some of the documents were also published in "Taiwan Legal Person".
It is understood that "Taiwan Lawyer" generally publishes articles by invitation. If a legal source is provided for use after the article is published, the author will in principle be notified; if authorized by the journal, the "authorizer" column of the legal source will also directly list the journal. According to our investigation, the legal opinions of the three judges were not sub-authorized by "Taiwan Legal Person". The three "authorizers" listed on the legal source page are the actual authorizers, and the documents were directly authorized by the three people.
If the document is a private work of three people, publishing, authorizing and obtaining royalties in their own names may not necessarily be a problem. However, on the one hand, they dispose of the document and obtain profits in the name of private work. On the other hand, they use the title of chief justice and use judicial terms such as "this bench", which makes the informal opinion have the judicial authority of the current chief judge, and it is easy for the outside world to misunderstand that it has the nature of a formal opinion.
