| dc.description.abstract | During elections, negative campaigning is a fairly common approach taken in Taiwan, and therefore often leads to cases of defamation in campaign. Owing to high political sensitivities with which such judicial cases are characterized, most people doubt whether such ruling results would be affected by political factors. This article collected data on judgments of campaign defamation in the Courts (District Court, the High Court and Supreme Court) from January 2000 to March 2011. Relevant data are obtained from “The Judicial Yuan of The Republic of China Law and Regulations Retrieving System.” Using quantitative analyses and qualitative method (documentary analyses and in-depth interviews), this article investigates the impacts of four indicators (partisanship, elected or not, sociopolitical connections, and judicial procedure) on litigations of campaign defamation. In the quantitative analyses, empirical data show that the three indicators (partisanship, sociopolitical connections, and judicial procedure) do not necessarily have a causal relationship with the Court’’s judgments except that those elected are more likely to be found not guilty. In the part of qualitative analyses, there is no obvious evidence proving that political factors systematically influence the Court’’s decisions. Generally speaking, we conclude that the stereotypes of judicial systems, for example, “the courts are dominated by the Kuomintang;” “those elected will be let off, but those losing the elections will be imprisoned;” “those with good social connections won’t have any problem, but those without connections will have big trouble;” or “at the first trial a heavy sentence is passed, at the second trial the sentence is halved, and at the third trial the case is quashed;” are different from the actual situations in judiciary operations. This gap between people’s perceptions and the reality is largely due to the general public’s unfamiliarity of the legal principles and politicians’ strategy to impose pressure on the Courts by mobilizing voters. In conclusion, the key findings and research limitations are reviewed, and suggestions of judicial politics are proposed for future research.
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