Feasibility of Establishment of Local Administrative Court To Be Decided.

　To resolve once and for all the problems with respect to the inaccessibility of administrative courts and the unsuitability that some administrative actions have been heard and adjudicated by ordinary courts, the Judicial Yuan’s Department of Administrative Litigation and Discipline acts on the instruction of the President of Judicial Yuan, Mr. Lai In-Jaw to evaluate and determine the feasibility of establishing district administrative court.

　In current practice, administrative actions can be initiated only at Taipei, Taichung, and Kaohsiung High Administrative Court, which causes geographical inconvenience to the claimants in other regions.  Specific and multifarious in nature and procedure, administrative suits relating to four main kinds of matters subject to administrative laws, state compensation, motion for objection to the punishment of violation of road traffic regulations, election and recall, and social order maintenance, are scattered in the jurisdiction of ordinary courts.

　The Judicial Yuan in August 2008 set up a special evaluation group to weigh up the feasibility of establishing district administrative court.  Four meetings have been convened to seek opinions rendered by the Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Transportation and Communication, and the Ministry of the Interior in connection with the above-identified four kinds of matters.

　For a number of years it has been the practice for the ordinary courts to hear the cases involving the four main kinds of matters.  Under this circumstance, the new expectation that administrative cases are all to be determined and adjudicated by district administrative court must go with drastic changes in the remedial procedures, court levels, and binding force and also require amendments to relevant laws and legislation of corresponding measures, to which the Ministry of Justice presents no opposite opinions, while the Ministry of the Interior is inclined to remain in the old practices.

　The Department of Administrative Litigation and Discipline will formulate the court levels for all administrative cases in terms of nature of these matters and also in consideration of the experience of all administrative court judges with an attempt to assign to the jurisdiction of the district administrative courts the administrative cases pertaining to particular locality.  This Department also emphasizes that people’s convenience and rights maintenance and the integrity of administrative judiciary power will still be the top priority.  (2008.10)

/CCS