How would Lady Justice be just while bearing the unbearable weight?

Work overload of judicial personnel has long been one of the focuses of judicial reform. In 2017, a judge surnamed Pao suffered from a stroke and passed out in the middle of a court meeting. His colleagues said that, Pao is a very responsible and hard-working judge who had been awarded for excellence in performance. In recent years, Pao often had to work until late night due to outstanding number of cases that were allocated to his court, his colleague said. Work overload is an issue not only for judges, but also for prosecutors. In 2019, a clerk in a prosecutors’ office committed suicide after suffering both mentally and physically—he was unable to take leaves to handle his divorce because of heavy workload. Shortage of manpower not only leads to overwork of judicial personnel, but also have negative impacts on quality of judicial investigation and trials.

Too few new judges, too many retirees

In a press conference in May, the Judicial Yuan said that courts of all levels receive over 3.5 million new cases per year, which are shared by 2,127 judges, meaning that one judge must handle 1,646 cases a year in average. To ensure that people’s rights are well protected, cases must be dealt with in a timely manner, and many complicated cases have to be carefully investigated to make sure justice is done. Therefore, judges only have limited time to complete their works, which means their actual workhours are shockingly long. 

In 2007, the Judicial Yuan released the Survey Report on Average Work Hours of Judges, which pointed out that, in Taipei and Yuan District Courts, the average work hour for a judge is 60 hours per week. The report also found that a judge would work more than 8 hours a day on 60% of workdays, meaning that a judge often has to work overtime on 60% of his/her workdays. Moreover, it’s common for judges to work in the late night, and majority of judges attribute overtime work to excessive number of cases. 

Judges who responded to the survey said that they would use 70% of their work time for trial-rated tasks. “Writing” tops with occupying 38.2% of judges’ time, they spend 19.8% of time reading case documents, and 15.4% of time presiding over court meetings. Other work-related activities include “attending conferences”, which occupies 5.1% of their time, “commenting on official reports” 4.9%, “data collection” 3.2%, “reviewing” 1.7%, “administrative work” 1.6%, “attending meetings on verdicts” 1.4%, “inquest” 1.2%, “on duty” 1%, and “others” 0.7%--which includes mentoring trainee judges and presiding over auctions. 

Although there has not been another survey on judges’ work hours in recent years, apparently their burden has not been reduced. According to the Annual Judicial Statistics Report, the lowest-level district courts handled 3,512,989 cases in 2020, including 239,824 old cases and 3,273,165 new cases. In civil court, a judge completed in average 74.36 cases a month, which increased by 9—or 13.3%--compared to the monthly average of 65.65 cases in 2015. As for criminal court, a judge in average completed 58.92 cases. Although it had decreased by 1.4 compared to the monthly average of 60.35 in 2015, when we look at the average number of days needed for each case, it was a growth of 19 days per case from 66.52 days in 2016 to 85.46 days per case in 2020.

According to Judicial Yuan’s Human Resources Department, it would take more than a decade to train a judge—including 4 years of university, passing the judiciary exam, going through 2-phase trainings of 5 years and 1 year, respectively, as an expectant judge, and passing qualification exams before becoming a full sitting judge. Hence, there is usually insufficient number of new judges to fill the vacancies of approximately 50 retiring judges annually.