Washington International Law Journal Volume 28 Number 3 7-1-2019 Transitional Justice in Taiwan: Changes and Challenges Nien-Chung Chang-Liao Yu-Jie Chen Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/wilj Part of the Comparative and Foreign Law Commons Recommended Citation Nien-Chung Chang-Liao & Yu-Jie Chen, Transitional Justice in Taiwan: Changes and Challenges, 28 Wash. L. Rev. 619 (2019). Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/wilj/vol28/iss3/5 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Reviews and Journals at UW Law Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Washington International Law Journal by an authorized editor of UW Law Digital Commons. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Compilation © 2019 Washington International Law Journal Association TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE IN TAIWAN: CHANGES AND CHALLENGES Nien-Chung Chang-Liao* and Yu-Jie Chen** Abstract: Taiwan’s experience with transitional justice over the past three decades suggests that dealing with historical injustice is a dynamic and fluid process that is fundamentally shaped and constrained by the balance of power and socio-political reality in a particular transitional society. This Article provides a contextualized legal-political analysis of the evolution of Taiwan’s transitional justice regime, with special attention to its limits and challenges. Since Taiwan’s democratization began, the transitional justice project developed by the former authoritarian Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang, KMT) has been rather disproportionately focused on restorative over retributive mechanisms, with the main emphasis placed on reparations and apology and little consideration of truth recovery and individual accountability.