Stalemate deepens as lawmakers back Constitutional Court bill again

Taipei, Jan. 10 (CNA) Opposition lawmakers on Friday voted again in support of legislation it had previously passed that raised the thresholds for Constitutional Court rulings, an expected outcome that thwarted the Cabinet's bid to overturn the bill.

In a revote requested by Taiwan's government, lawmakers from the main opposition Kuomintang (KMT) and the smaller Taiwan People's Party (TPP), who together form a majority in the Legislature, once again endorsed the new measures they pushed through in December 2024.

The vote in the 113-seat legislature was 62-51, breaking along partisan lines.

Friday's outcome came as no surprise, and ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers have said the next step would be to bring the issue to the Constitutional Court and seek an injunction to halt enforcement of the measures and a ruling to have them revoked.

Legal battle shrouded in uncertainty

The amendments to the Constitutional Court Procedure Act mandate that a minimum of 10 justices hear and rule on a case and require an unconstitutional ruling to be supported by at least nine justices.

That is in contrast to the current rules governing the court that do not set a quorum for reviewing a case and allow rulings to be made by a simple majority vote.

So how any legal battle involving the Constitutional Court can proceed remains unclear because there are only eight justices currently sitting on the 15-seat court, presenting a Catch-22 scenario.

Under normal legal precedents, the amendments would have to take effect, which requires them being signed into law by the president, before they can be ruled on by the Constitutional Court.

But if they have taken effect, then the eight justices on the court would not meet the threshold set and could not rule on the case.

The government could try again to add justices to the court. Lai previously nominated seven candidates to replace the seven members whose eight-year terms ended on Oct. 31, 2024, but all of them were rejected by the Legislature later in the year.

As of now, the president has yet to select new nominees.

So the DPP government has suggested other ways to get around the potential stalemate.

At a Cabinet news conference on Thursday, Minister without Portfolio Lin Ming-hsin (林明昕) indicated the possibility of petitioning the court before the amendments take effect, citing a concept in civil litigation known as "preventive relief."

Lin acknowledged, however, that such an approach would be unprecedented and that there were no provisions in the laws governing the procedures at the Constitutional Court to support it.

Speaking to CNA, Elvin Lu (呂政諺), head of the Law and Policy Department of the Judicial Reform Foundation (JRF), said petitioning against the measures before they are signed into law by Lai could be an option for the DPP, although "theoretical controversies" remain.

That option could come into play if DPP lawmakers quickly file a petition for an injunction, though the Presidential Office's secretary-general has suggested that Lai will eventually sign the amendments into law.

If the amendments do take effect, Lu said some scholars have argued that the eight justices could still retain the power to review the case "based on an understanding that the Constitutional Court's procedural autonomy and right to self-defense have been undermined."

Ready to petition?

The DPP has said the measures risked disrupting the Constitutional Court's operations and restricting the public's access to rulings in cases where they believe their basic rights have been violated.

Speaking after the revote, Wu Szu-yao (吳思瑤), secretary-general of the DPP caucus, said that under the leadership of Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT, "unconstitutional practices have become the norm and bad precedents the routine."

She said the DPP caucus was "ready" to petition against the measures at the Constitutional Court.

KMT and TPP lawmakers have said the revisions would ensure more rigorous reviews by the Constitutional Court and that a minimum requirement was necessary to prevent future cases from being decided by only a handful of justices.

TPP lawmaker Huang Shan-shan (黃珊珊) said it was the Legislature's responsibility to amend the law because unconstitutional rulings were always "major declarations that affect the nation's systems and the public's rights."