—Yinn-ching Lu, S.J.D. candidate, Emory University School of Law
Taiwan’s Constitutional Court (TCC) has issued no merits decisions since October 28, 2024. This silence reflects not constitutional stability but constitutional crisis. Taiwan is witnessing one of the most serious political deadlocks in this century. Who can break this deadlock? The TCC has refused to play such a role, officially declaring a vacuum in constitutional order. This essay reports the TCC’s turbulence from 2024-2025 and contributes to comparative constitutional scholarship with a regional case study examining what role constitutional courts play within democracy.
Setting the Stage for Constitutional Turmoil
Taiwan’s 2024 national election on president and parliament was the prelude of this constitutional turmoil. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) won an unprecedented third consecutive presidency but lost its Legislative Yuan majority to a Kuomintang (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) coalition. This divided government compelled the TCC to adjudicate multiple political disputes, making it a target of political attack.
The TCC was first involved in the political dispute when the KMT-TPP coalition aimed to expand its oversight powers in May 2024. The amendments granted legislators the authority to summon officials and citizens, to criminalize allegedly false statements to the legislature, and to require the President to deliver reports and answer questions from legislators. The Court struck down a substantial part of the parliamentary reforms on the constitutional principle of separation of powers (case link).
Realizing that the TCC was a key obstacle to transforming the legal landscape, the KMT-TPP coalition expanded the reform agenda to the Court. On July 12, 2024, the coalition initiated an amendment to the Constitutional Court Procedure Act (CCPA), echoing the 1958 historical precedent but in a sophisticated manner (for scholarly comments, see here, here, here, and here).
The amendment includes three elements. First, it raised the quorum required for constitutional adjudication to 10 justices, regardless of how many justices are actually in office. Second, the amendment imposes a supermajority voting rule, requiring at least nine votes to strike down a law. Third, the amendment required the above two changes to take effect immediately after promulgation, unlike the norm granting a reaction time – 3 days – for a new law.
This amendment was especially problematic considering the incoming vacancies of the Court. Seven justices’ terms expired at the end of October 2024. President Lai Ching-te nominated seven legal scholars and practitioners to fill these vacancies. However, all nominees were rejected by the Legislative Yuan on December 25, 2024. Even the second round of nomination failed entirely on July 24, 2025.
These coordinated actions effectively paralyzed the TCC. With only eight incumbent justices, the Court could not meet the new ten-justice quorum, thereby stopping all of its main business, ranging from holding oral arguments, issuing injunctions, and declaring rulings. The last merits decision was made on October 28, 2024.
Several political and legal strategies were adopted, all in vain. The president held meetings among the heads of five constitutional branches; the Premier of the Executive Yuan requested the Legislative Yuan to reconsider the CCPA; civic groups protested and initiated a recall movement to unseat the KMT legislators. None of these strategies succeeded. One option remained: judicial self-protection – the Court striking down the CCPA itself (for scholarly comment, see here).
The Dialogue between Justices
The Court’s attitude toward judicial self-protection is wavering. At the moment of the promulgation of the CCPA, December 20, 2024, the TCC made an official announcement condemning it as “impairing the constitutional organ’s function (造成憲政機關運作上的困難)” and “hindering the protection of fundamental rights (不利於人民基本權利之保障).” Despite its assertiveness, the Court did not make any legal decision on this issue until February 10, 2025. The Court, in the name of a three-justice panel, composed of Justices Lu Tai-lang, Tsai Tzung-Jen, and Chu Fu-meei, declined to hear a request, filed by ordinary people, to review the constitutionality of the CCPA. On May 14, in a surprise ruling, the TCC agreed to hear the CCPA case upon a petition by DPP legislators. These contradictory moves of the TCC imply significant disagreements within the chamber.
As two months passed, no decision was made by the Court, and the storm appeared to overflow the teacup. Some justices started to express their positions via opinions attached to procedural dismissal decisions. In a dismissal decision on July 30, 2025, three justices, Chen Chun-wu, Hsieh Ming-yang, and Yu Po-sheng, opined that fundamental rights, especially the right to a fair trial, were not affected because the Court is not bound by unconstitutional procedures enacted by the legislature. Justice Lu Tai-lang, in another dissenting opinion of dismissal on September 19, joined by the previous three justices, considered the CCPA to be unconstitutional as violating the judicial supremacy enshrined in constitutional law.
While the four justices’ views support judicial self-protection, the way they expressed them seemed to reveal that the Court cannot reach an agreement. One former justice, Huang Horng-shya, in an interview published on October 6, 2025, speculated that three justices were boycotting this case by refusing to join the court deliberations on the CCPA case. This explains why the Court still cannot make a decision until now. Justice Huang’s speculation was confirmed two days later.
On October 8, Justices Tsai Tzung-jen, Yang Hui-ching, and Chu Fu-meei made an announcement via the newspaper. They asserted that the “Justices shall observe the legally valid CCPA enacted by legislators (大法官須遵守現行有效之憲法訴訟法規定)”, and that the Court “should not expand its power unconstitutionally (不得以違憲方式自我擴權)”. Therefore, they posited that the Court “shall not hold the meeting (不得進行已受理案件之評議)” on the CCPA case according to the new CCPA-mandated 10-justice quorum, as there are only eight incumbent justices.
This unprecedented statement revealed the impossibility for the Court to defend itself. Within the Court, whereas four justices supported the view that the Court does not need to observe the CCPA, three justices believed the CCPA to be constitutional. Assuming the silent Justice Tsai Tsai-chen supports the four justices’ view, a five-justice bloc would fall short even under the old quorum requirement of 2/3 of serving justices (6 out of the current 8).
Public views divide. Those who believe the KMT-TPP coalition is moving toward democratic backsliding are disappointed as the TCC cannot play the role of a bulwark of democracy. Those who think the deadlock is normal politics under divided government tend to believe that judicial avoidance can build the authority of the Court. However, note that Taiwan’s system of judicial review works on the constitutional court model, with one court monopolizing the constitutional jurisdiction. Constitutional jurisdiction includes not only the disputes among branches but also the protection of fundamental rights. The flipside of political avoidance is the dysfunction of fundamental rights protection for people.
Taiwan’s experience echoes court-paralysis strategies seen in Poland and Hungary, yet with a crucial difference: here, institutional gridlock stems from divided government rather than dominant-party control. This reveals how procedural manipulation can achieve judicial paralysis even without unified political power.
The Cost of Constitutional Turmoil
When is the end of this constitutional turmoil? One possible timing is the third round of judicial nomination. If the president can nominate some middle-ground candidates that the parliament can accept, we can anticipate the Court restoring its business. However, this anticipation is quite unrealistic, considering the past two rounds of confirmation experiences and the still escalating confrontation between the executive and legislative branches.
Another possible end point is the next election. As the new electoral result can change the equilibrium, it is reasonable to speculate that the deadlock will be broken. Yet, this solution comes at a heavy cost: the constitutional order will persist in a vacuum for additional years. As statistics show, there are more than 385 pending cases, and 354 of them are petitions filed by ordinary people. How constitutional protection will be enforced remains deeply uncertain.
Suggested citation: Yinn-ching Lu, The Vacuum of Constitutional Order in Taiwan: 2024-2025, Int’l J. Const. L. Blog, Nov. 18, 2025, at: http://www.iconnectblog.com/the-vacuum-of-constitutional-order-in-taiwan-2024-2025/