Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) caucus whip Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Weng Hsiao-ling (翁曉玲) have been stealing the limelight in the new legislature. The former graduated from Cornell University in the US, and the latter from Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in Germany. Both are holders of doctorates of law.
Taiwanese worship academic credentials. Anyone with a doctorate is like a god. Former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) also has a doctorate in law, from Harvard University. However, that did not stop him from making the absurd mistake of thinking that lurong (鹿茸, a young deer’s budding antlers) refers to the “hair in a deer’s ears.” It sometimes beggars belief how incredibly ignorant these doctors of law can be.
Huang and Weng are touted as respective specialists in constitutional and administrative law. However, they were struck dumb in the Constitutional Court when Justice Yu Po-hsiang (尤伯祥) asked them to provide a clear definition for legal purposes of what they meant by “counterquestioning” in the KMT-TPP-led controversial legislative reform bill.
Yu even gave Huang three days to prepare a written plea that was to include a clear definition of the term. This left me wondering how much doctors of law from prestigious universities actually know about law.
The pair — leaders of “legislative reform” and advocates of “counterquestioning” — have been building a mechanism for punishing officials who defy procedures, but when questioned, were at a loss for words.
Moreover, a bunch of lawmakers like Weng think it is unfair that in defending the legislative reform bill before the Constitutional Court, they have to face a battery of lawyers representing the Presidential Office, the Executive Yuan, the Control Yuan and the Democratic Progressive Party legislative caucus, saying they were outnumbered one to four. Again, what an absurdity. What really counts is whether the legislative reform bill is constitutional. It is a yes-no question, and this yes or no is to be objectively determined by justices, not by majority vote.
If a school were to implement its own school lunch program, surely, it can be decided by majority vote. Is the Earth flat? Is one a prime number? Were there 29 days in February this year? Are we supposed to believe that such questions are best answered by majority decision? Of course not; they are based on objective truth.
In the Constitutional Court, one does not have an upper hand because one has more lawyers than the other side. Whether it is right and reasonable is what determines who wins the lawsuit. It has nothing to do with the number of attorneys present. The more, the higher winning percentage? What kind of doctor of law in the world would offer such an interesting insight like this?
Chang Kuo-tsai is a retired associate professor of National Hsinchu University of Education.
Translated by Chen Chi-huang
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