司法鎮壓：「揣摩上意」在台灣威權時期軍事審判中的影響

Judicialization of Repression: The Effect of“Second-Guessing”in the Military Trials during the Taiwan Authoritarian Rule

鎮壓增加威權政體與威權統治者存續的可能性，不過既有研究受限於資料，而甚少說明威權統治者在鎮壓中的角色，以及威權統治者為何能夠控制鎮壓結果以符合自己的利益。本文將以台灣轉型正義資料庫回答此一問題。軍事法庭受到威權統治時期國民黨政府的高度應用，在鎮壓政治異議時提供兩種功能：首先是依受裁判人威脅政府的程度給予相應的刑度；其次，威脅程度較高的案件，必須層層向上呈交至總統核定後才能結案。就後者而言，史學者指出，下級審判官員會「揣摩上意」，使其判決盡可能符合上級的偏好。本文將檢驗「揣摩上意」的假設，了解總統蔣介石的介入對於政治案件判決與軍事審判過程的影響。我們的分析顯示：若蔣介石在前一年再審或否決較多下級機關的判決，則下級機關在後續審判時會更傾向審慎斟酌，參謀總長透過較多次的審判與否決，使上呈總統前個案受到審理的整體次數也會增加，審判結果更可能符合統治者偏好。

"Repression increases dictators and authoritarian regimes’prospects of survival. The existing literature, however, limited by available data, rarely explains the role a dictator plays in the repression to ensure his interests. This article employs the Taiwan Transitional Justice Database to address this question. The military courts, on which the Kuomintang government highly relied during the authoritarian rule, had two functions in repressing the dissidents: 1. to sentence the accused on the basis of the severity of the threat against the regime; 2. to submit the more threatening cases upwards for the president’s review before closing the trial. In the latter scenario, it has been suggested that the low-ranking judges would tweak their judgments by“second guessing”their superiors’preference. This article tests the“second-guessing”hypothesis, examining how the intervention of Chiang Kai-shek, the dictator and the president of the Republic of China on Taiwan, influenced the judges’behaviors and the trial process. We find that the military court was evidently pandering to the Generalissimo, as our findings show that the Chief of the General Staff was more likely to reject the lower court judges’judgments and review the cases multiple times, and the lower court judges more likely to be more cautious in handing out sentences to accommodate the top ruler’s preference, if Chiang Kai-shek vetoed the judgments of the lower court or required their retrials more often in the previous year."