Washington International Law Journal Volume 28 Number 3 7-1-2019 Whither Converging Narratives of Justice in Transition? Transitional Justice and Judicial Reform in Taiwan Agnes S. Schick-Chen Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/wilj Part of the Comparative and Foreign Law Commons, and the Courts Commons Recommended Citation Agnes S. Schick-Chen, Whither Converging Narratives of Justice in Transition? Transitional Justice and Judicial Reform in Taiwan, 28 Wash. L. Rev. 677 (2019). Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/wilj/vol28/iss3/8 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 WHITHER CONVERGING NARRATIVES OF JUSTICE IN TRANSITION? TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE AND JUDICIAL REFORM IN TAIWAN1 Agnes S. Schick-Chen2 Abstract: Referring to Taiwan’s recent transitional justice legislation as a first tentative step towards the possibility of judicial solutions for problems of injustice dating from the authoritarian era, this paper elaborates chances and difficulties of introducing the judiciary to the ongoing processes of coming to terms with the past in Taiwan. It intends to argue that apart from the specific circumstances of Taiwan’s transition to democracy after the lifting of martial law in 1987, the avoidance of a judicial approach to transitional justice was both caused by and the reason for a deficit in narratives of judicial justice.