Break down the high threshold for constitutional amendment! Scholars and lawyers advocate amending the Constitutional Procedure Law first to establish a hierarchical system to solve the problem

Our country's constitution has been revised seven times. However, the seventh amendment passed the extremely high threshold of Article 12 of the "Additional Articles to the Constitution". As a result, the "Constitution" has not been revised in the past 20 years to adapt to the changes of the times. In this regard, some lawyers and legal scholars said in the Legislative Yuan's Constitutional Amendment Committee today that the only solution to get rid of the "wooden man clause" of the constitutional amendment referendum is to amend the "Constitutional Procedure Law", and advocated the establishment of a "threshold classification" system for constitutional amendments to ensure that the constitution can be changed, defended and more sustainable.

The Legislative Yuan Constitutional Revision Committee held a public hearing today (21st) to discuss the current dual high-threshold response measures for constitutional amendments, the hierarchical threshold regulations for different issues in the constitutional amendment referendum, and the transfer and title transfer mechanism of supervisory powers after the abolition of the Supervisory Yuan.

In response to the fact that the current threshold for amending the constitution is too high, Fu Xinyi, the principal lawyer of Pingxin International Law Firm, said that this provision makes it difficult to pass issues with a high degree of social consensus such as "18-year-old citizenship", and it has also led to the paradoxical phenomenon that "the acquiescence is regarded as an opponent"; faced with the "Ross Paradox" that resolves the high threshold, one must pass the high threshold, she quoted John. Rawls's "A Theory of Justice" and the spirit of the "27th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution" suggest that the bill to lower the threshold for constitutional amendments can be designed to "take effect after two terms (waiting for 8 years)" to eliminate political party suspicion.

In addition, she advocated the establishment of a "threshold grading system": a low threshold for the expansion of people's rights, a medium threshold for the operation of government organizational power, and a very high threshold for core items such as national sovereignty to ensure that the constitution "can be changed, defended, and adapted."

Lin Mingqiang, a distinguished professor at the National Taiwan University School of Law, said that Article 12 of the "Additional Articles of the Constitution" has made the Constitution immobile for the past 21 years, which seriously violates the principle of justice for generations. He bluntly said that the cost of re-writing the constitution is too high and the "constitutional moment" (constitutional moment) has passed. The only cost-effective way is to declare Article 12 unconstitutional through the "Constitutional Court".

In order to realize this approach, Lin Mingqiang suggested that the Legislative Yuan should start amending Article 49 of the "Constitutional Procedure Law" to authorize the Constitutional Court to review constitutional norms; at the same time, fill the vacancies of justices, resurrect the Constitutional Court, and give the judicial organs weapons, so that this "wooden clause" can be eradicated from the procedural side.