| 英文摘要 |
Among the numerous petitions for constitutional adjudication, why is it that only very few of them—and even fewer in the recent years—have their days in Taiwan’s Constitutional Court (TCC)? To solve this puzzle/problem and provide policy suggestions for institutional reform, this article uses insights and analytical tools developed in the field of judicial politics to advance a preliminary yet systematic study of the law and politics of agenda-setting in TCC. This article first attempts to outline a descriptive and explanatory theory about the causes and consequences of TCC’s agenda-setting. In the course of analyzing the institutional, the aggregate, and the case-specific agenda-setting mechanisms in Taiwan’s constitutional adjudicative procedure in functional terms, this article finds, inter alia, that TCC not only has de facto power over case selection, but also can manage its agenda by timing its decisions sooner or later. This article also analyzes the behaviors of the major actors in TCC’s agenda-setting and generates some hypotheses to be tested by further empirical inquiries. On the normative front, this article argues against the existing ’semi-case-selection’ regime on the grounds that it fails to prevent decision error while aggravating the problem of judicial hypocrisy. In addition to entrusting TCC with full control over its docket, this article recommends reform measures inspired by the idea of ’harnessing judicial politics to fix judicial politics.’ |
