Transformation from the top-down or bottom-up?: Legal education reform as a microcosm of Taiwan’s inconclusive judicial reform process

Abstract

Legal education was at the center of judicial reform in Japan and South Korea. In those countries, reformers were primarily concerned with expanding the number of lawyers from their relatively low numbers. Postwar Japan, Korea, and Taiwan qualified comparatively low numbers of new lawyers each year, and this was widely believed to be a deliberate policy to maintain the strength of the government and its bureaucracy in economic and social life, the latter more clearly important in authoritarian Korea and Taiwan. Meanwhile, democratization loomed large in the decisions to expand the legal profession and reform legal education. This was especially true in Korea, where reformers believed that increasing the size of the bar would expand access to justice and result in a net benefit to society. Modern legal education in Taiwan began during the Japanese colonial period. To become a lawyer, one needed to travel to Japan for training. © 2020 selection and editorial matter, Neil Chisholm; individual chapters, the contributors.