The Impossibility of Legal Constrain on Bureaucratic Discretion: A Case Study of Supreme Court Rulings

• Main Authors: Lin, Yu-Chun, 林俞君
• Other Authors: Chen,Don-Yun
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/35045064849138471914

碩士 === 國立政治大學 === 公共行政研究所 === 97 === This research intends to answer the question of “how Supreme Court Rulings have impacts on bureaucratic discretion?” As the superior judicial review authority, Supreme Court Rulings are usually thought as an authority which bureaucrats must obey. Is it really the case? In this research, both bureaucrats and Supreme Court are seen as rational actors who have preferences over different outcomes, as the Public Choice theorists usually depict. Author utilizes public choice theory to bridge the gap between the fields of public administration and public law on the issue.. Empirically, this study collects the administrative decrees which were announced unconstitutional by Supreme Court before the end of 2008 in Taiwan. Sixty-six Supreme Court Rulings are found and categorized into four groups by two dimensions: (1) whether the grand judges give the bureaucrats discretion and (2) whether the bureaucrats follow the grand judges’ will to reform the decrees. Both secondary data analysis and in-depth interviews are used in this research to figure out bureaucrats’ preference and the way they respond to the grand judges’ decisions. The statistical result shows that after been announced unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, about 15% of the administrative decrees stay the same. The reasons for this “unresponsiveness” to the Supreme Court Rulings are varied case by case. Basically speaking, bureaucrats take laws as means to fulfill their tasks. They are not motivated to follow the rule of law if there is a requirement to pay an excessive costs to achieve the policy goals. It is interesting to know that judicial review is high on its moral ground but sometimes it is a mechanism without an administrative devises to enforce their rulings. Also, the problems of information asymmetry, multi-principle and multi-agent will also be found in the relationship between Supreme Court and bureaucrats. To sum up, on the one hand, this research has shown that to follow the rule of law is not bureaucrats’ priority. As a result, an administrative mechanism is needed to enforce the Supreme Court Rulings. For example, the Research, Development and Evaluation Commission (RDEC) of Executive Yuan or the Control Yuan can be assigned to do the job. However, on the other hand, the Supreme Court always stands on the side of protecting human rights against government activities, sometimes the rulings might lead to government activities unworkable as we can see from the cases of the Rulings 400 and 440. How to balance the issue of protecting citizen’s rights and governability of the administrative agencies is one of the key problems needed to be solved in order to realize democratic governance in the future.