Session C1

重新檢驗大法官在台灣民主化中的角色：以大法官釋字第二六一號為例
Reexamining the Role of the Constitutional Court in Taiwan’s Democratization: Evidence from the J.Y. Interpretation No. 261

王金壽 Chin-Shou Wang

Department of Political Science, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan
台灣國立成功大學政治學系

宋昱嫺 Yu-Hsien Sung

Department of Political Science, University of South Carolina, USA
美國南卡羅來納大學政治學系

Most Taiwan law scholars claimed that the Constitutional Court paved the way of the Taiwan’s
democratization and constitutional reforms. These legal studies regard the Constitutional Interpretation No. 261 as the most critical case in Taiwan’s judicial history. In this paper, we will challenge this dominant argument of these legal scholars. We will reexamine the political role of the Constitutional Court during the processes of the Taiwanese democratization by citing
Interpretation No. 261 as a hard case. This study will mainly base on qualitative analysis; we will analyze court records, the memoir of judges and conduct interviews. We argue that Constitutional Court made little contribution to Taiwan’s democratization. This paper shows that the role of Taiwan’s Constitutional Court in the process of democratization has been far more complicated and far less promising than is commonly thought.

Keywords: Constitutional Court, Democratization, J.Y. Interpretation