Quasi-Legal Texts

Indictment: This is

a formal charge accusing someone of a serious crime. The form of an

indictment can vary in different countries. Criminal and civil indictments have different elements. For a criminal indictment produced by a prosecutor in Taiwan, the facts pertaining to the crime take up a major portion of the indictment (see Appendix 3 for reference). So as to

be readily intelligible to the accused, the style is usually plain in comparison to a judgment, which is typically solemn and characterized by a formal register of speech. A typical criminal indictment issued by the prosecutor’s office in Taiwan is as shown below:

Hu and Liu held a public wedding ceremony at Qizhenmei Hotel in Zhonghe City of Taipei County (newly named as “Zhonghe District

39 Retrieved 2017/10/24 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_and_testament

40 Retrieved 2017/10/24 http://www.talkleft.com/story/2009/7/1/16587/31716/offtopic/Michael-Jackson-s-Will

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of New Taipei City”, similarly hereinafter) on December 4th 2005,

with a number of guests invited to the wedding reception. The two parties failed to file marriage registration, but are lawful spouses in accordance with regulations set forth in the Part governing family in the Civil Code applicable at the time of their wedding. Hu, who knows that he has a wedded spouse, filed marriage registration with the intent of contracting another marriage at the Household Registration Office in Zhongshan District of Taipei City with Hsu on May 20th 2013, and thus committed bigamy. ⁴¹

For a civil indictment, the claimant is expected to clearly write his (her) claim statement (suzi-shen-ming 訴之聲明)so that the judge can process the case in an efficient way (for a basic form see Appendix 3).

Judgment:

⁴² A judgment is a court’s decision regarding the rights and liabilities of parties in a legal action or proceeding. A written judgment mainly consists of holdings, facts, and reasons for the judgment. As a whole, it provides the court's decision and an

41 Adapted from Taipei High Court Criminal Judgement 102 Tai-Sang-Zi No.193 (台灣高等法院 102 台上字第 193 刑事判決). The Chinese original is as follows: 胡 OO 和劉 OO 於民國 94 年 12 月 4 日，在台北縣中和 市（現改制為新北市中和區，下同）餐廳舉行公開結婚儀式並宴請多位賓客，雖未辦理結婚登記，惟依 當時民法親屬編之規定，劉 OO 仍為胡 OO 之合法配偶。胡 OO 明知其係有配偶之人，竟基於重婚之犯意，

於 102 年 5 月 20 日與許 OO 前往台北市中山區戶政事務所辦理結婚登記（斯時民法親屬編已改採登記婚 制度），而重為婚姻。

42 Flores-Torres v. Holder 680 F. Supp. 2d 1099 (2009)

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explanation of why it has chosen to make a particular court order. In this globalized world, important judgments or decisions can have an influence outside their country of origin. Taking an important decision in the history of same-sex marriage as an example, in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges, the holding in the judgment states: “The Fourteenth Amendment requires a State to license a marriage between two people of the same sex and to recognize a marriage between two people of the same sex when their marriage was lawfully licensed and performed out-of-State.” It is believed this decision may have influenced later amendments of legislation in many other countries.⁴³

In a globalized society, a significant number of litigants are foreign nationals or new immigrants. Thus, the wording of a judgment needs to be precise so that it is easily understood by speakers of different languages. In Taiwan, judgments are known for their style of solemnity and archaic expressions such as shang (尚), zu (足), wei (惟), xi (係),

yi (伊),

xun-fei-ke-cai (洵非可採), and even double negatives such as gu-fei-wu-jian (固非 無 見 ), shang-you-wei-qia (尚 有 未 洽 ), which makes them difficult to understand,

43 Obergefell v. Hodges was a landmark decision United States Supreme Court case. The Court held that the

recognition and provision of same-sex marriage is a fundamental right. They ruled it is guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. On June 26, 2015, Obergefell requires all states to issue a license to marry between all people of the same sex. It requires all states to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions.

especially for foreign nationals and new immigrants (see exerpts of both civil and criminal judgements in Taiwan in Appendix 4). Between November 2016 and August 2017 Taiwan’s judiciary held three conferences on judicial reform. Each conference

included the solicitation of opinions from various sectors, subgroup sessions, and a wrap-up session. The fourth sub-group was themed "establishing a participatory, transparent, and friendly judiciary," and focused on making judgments easy to read by adjusting their format and structure. Making legal documents more readable has also recently become a growing concern in the United States, where a movement spearheaded by lawyers is promoting the reduction of legalese in legal writings to make them more

intelligible to the general public and to indirectly increase legal literacy. Subgroup 4-3,

titled “Judicial Transparency,” focused on how to improve the relationship between people and the judiciary, and suggested that this may be achieved by increasing the openness in judicial proceedings and transparency in the release of judicial information, and that such measures as direct court broadcasts and disclosure of indictments should be used to reach this goal. Subgroup 4-4, titled "Creating a People-friendly Judiciary,"

suggested that judges review the format and structure of their own judgments so as to make them more readable. Subgroup 4-4 also suggested that legal education should be strengthened so that legal concepts become deeply

Generally speaking, strict legal texts have a stricter requirement for precision in wording

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than do quasi-legal documents. Regardless of the type of legal document, when there is any vagueness or ambiguity involved, statutory interpretation might be needed, which is normally carried out by applying one or more of the interpretive canons discussed below.

在文檔中 法律語言之歧義及模糊性 - 政大學術集成 (頁 41-45)