With the birth of Grand Chambers (大法庭)
under the Supreme Court and Supreme Administrative Court on July 4,
2019 and the demise of the nonagenarian precedent-resolution system
on the same day, Taiwan enters a new chapter in its judicial
history.
The Precedent-Resolution System is abandoned
Taiwan's legal system bears an obvious imprint of the
Continental Law. Parallel to the Supreme Court (SC) which is the
final court of appeal for civil and criminal disputes, a separate
Supreme Administrative Court (SAC) serves as the final court of
appeal for administrative disputes, as a result of the principle of
judicial dualism of private law and public law. While written laws
and regulations are placed at a higher level in the hierarchy of
sources of law, "precedents" and "resolutions"
set by the SC or SAC used to have a strong de facto
binding effect on lower courts. A precedent was a holding on a
legal issue given by the SC or SAC in a decision and later
recognized as of
