Judicial Review of Constitutional Amendments: Taiwan

Major differences in the finality and impact of judicial review from country to country have led scholars to distinguish between “hard” and “soft” forms of judicial review. However, hard review does not give courts the last word: even in systems of nominally hard review, the government usually retains the ability to effectively override the courts via constitutional amendment. Instead, “super-hard” judicial review has emerged in the form of judicial review of constitutional amendments. Even “super-hard” review, in turn, comes in varying degrees of hardness. Using Taiwan as illustration, this chapter develops a continuum or six-point scale of judicial review puissance.