On May 20, Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te marked one year in office with a highly anticipated speech. As with other milestones in Lai’s tenure, observers were keen to analyze his rhetoric for language that might be viewed as provocative in Beijing. Ultimately, Lai did not directly reference China, instead delivering a mostly Taiwan-centric message as the archipelago’s export-driven economy faces possible tariffs from the Trump administration. The advent of his speech passed quietly.
Less well covered, however, was an announcement made days earlier by Taiwan’s Constitutional Court that its eight justices would begin hearing a case brought by legislators from Lai’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) – despite lacking the quorum to issue a ruling. More interesting, the case concerned a law passed by opposition legislators requiring that Constitutional Court rulings be approved by a two-thirds majority of the 15 judges statutorily mandated to sit on the court, a standard rendered impossible by the opposition’s rejection of new judicial nominees. Unable to resolve the impasse itself, the court essentially opted to kick the can down the road, exposing Taiwan’s long-simmering constitutional crisis.
To understand how Taiwan’s highest court found itself in such an unprecedented position – at a moment of rising cross-strait tensions and uncertainty in Taiwan-U.S. relations – it is necessary to first understand Taiwan’s legislative gridlock. In January 2024, Lai achieved an unprecedented third consecutive presidential victory for his DPP, known for its staunch pro-sovereignty stance. The DPP, however, lost its majority in Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan, securing only 51 seats to the 52 won by the more China-friendly Kuomintang (KMT). The upstart Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) holds the balance of power with eight seats and has largely aligned with the KMT in key votes.
On May 28, 2024, just a week after Lai and the new legislative class were inaugurated, KMT and TPP lawmakers passed a sweeping bill that would have expanded the Legislative Yuan’s investigative powers. The legislation granted lawmakers broad authority to compel government officials – including the president – and private citizens to provide testimony and documents, including provisions to fine or imprison those who did not comply with such requests for “contempt of the legislature.”
Critics denounced the bill as a power grab to weaken the DPP-held Executive Yuan (equivalent to the presidential administration or Cabinet) and asserted that the bill’s broad investigative powers recalled Taiwan’s martial law era, which spanned much of the latter half of the 20th century. Despite mass protests, the opposition-controlled legislature passed the bill, prompting the President’s Office to refer the matter to Taiwan’s Constitutional Court for review.
In October 2024, Taiwan’s Constitutional Court struck down multiple core provisions of the law, finding that elements of the legislature’s expanded authority violated Taiwan’s separation of powers and the Executive Yuan’s autonomy. This reprieve proved to be short-lived.
Months earlier, KMT legislator Weng Hsiao-ling had introduced amendments to the Constitutional Court Procedures Act (CCPA) that raise the threshold for judicial review. Under these new rules, decisions from the Constitutional Court would require approval from two-thirds of the court’s full statutory membership of 15 justices. Previously, the court had been able to issue rulings by a simple majority of its current serving justices, a reform passed years earlier to boost efficiency. Similarly, the new CCPA amendments increase the requirement for the Court to strike down legislation as unconstitutional from a simple majority to a two-thirds supermajority.
Although the October ruling had been issued with a full court of 15 justices, Weng’s July amendments were proposed with an eye toward the future: seven of those justices were set to finish their eight-year terms at the end of October 2024. Ultimately, the amendments passed into law and were enacted in January 2025.
Cognizant of the amendment’s implications and the sitting justices’ term limits, Lai proposed seven nominees to the Constitutional Court in August 2024. The Legislative Yuan rejected the entire slate, with the KMT denying all seven and the TPP supporting only one. Although a new hearing for nominees has been scheduled for late July 2025 – delayed from its original date in April – this impasse has effectively paralyzed the Constitutional Court, undercutting its ability to resolve issues of constitutionality in Taiwanese law. This deadlock is what prompted the Lai administration and DPP legislators to request review by the Constitutional Court despite it having only eight justices and thus lacking a quorum to issue a ruling. This case ultimately became the first that the court chose to accept with its new reduced membership in May.
Although this has bearings on major institutional cases, the clearest losers in this situation are the Taiwanese people. A full 98 percent of the Constitutional Court’s cases in recent years have been launched by individual petitions seeking protections for their basic rights.
Meanwhile, the KMT and TPP – boxed out of executive power for another four years – turned their attention to reshaping Taiwan’s national budget against the interest of the ruling DPP. In January 2025, the legislature passed a national budget that cut or froze $6.3 billion from the Executive Yuan’s original proposal – the largest cut in Taiwan’s history. Although the Executive Yuan requested a reconsideration, the legislature upheld the budget in a party-line vote.
The final budget included approximately $19.4 billion in defense spending – the largest amount in nominal terms but a smaller share of GDP than the previous year. That appeared sure to harm Taiwan’s standing with the Trump administration, which has repeatedly fixated on defense spending as a percentage of GDP in its relations with partners around the world. Although the Executive Yuan has proposed a supplementary $12.6 billion spending bill that includes provisions for investment in national security, it is still pending review. Recently reported efforts by U.S. officials to urge opposition lawmakers to stop obstructing defense appropriations may push the needle, but the outcome remains unclear.
Rounding out the political standoff is the “Great Recall,” a campaign that originally sought to force a recall vote against every KMT legislator. On June 20, Taiwan’s Central Elections Commission announced that citizen-led campaigns had achieved enough support to trigger recall votes against 24 KMT legislators, scheduled for July 26. Experts identify 10 of the targeted legislators as being particularly vulnerable to recall. Any successful recall votes would trigger a by-election – typically held within three months – after which the winner would serve out the remainder of the legislative term, ending in January 2028.
Faced with unresolvable gridlock in the legislature and judiciary, the DPP is seeking to unseat enough opposition lawmakers to regain a legislative majority, thereby enabling it to pass budgets, re-amend the CPPA, and confirm additional justices to the Constitutional Court. This strategy is not without its risks. Even if the recall votes are successful, the DPP likely has an uphill battle in the resulting by-elections. Winning would likely require appealing to centrist or swing voters – a task that may prove difficult given Lai’s focus on rallying the DPP’s base in recent months. The DPP also could see backlash to its recall efforts in 2026 local elections, which already have a track record of favoring the KMT.
Finally, the KMT could call a no-confidence motion as a last-ditch effort to increase the political pressure, potentially leading Lai to call new legislative elections. For now, however, the KMT appears to be focused on defending vulnerable legislators, likely understanding the implications of its own popularity issues in new elections.
In all likelihood, Taiwan appears to be slated for more legislative gridlock, which implies further paralysis for its executive and judicial branches. Even if the DPP’s recall efforts succeed, Taiwan remains an increasingly polarized society, and these underlying divisions will continue to be reflected in future elections. These internal political dynamics have bearings on the provision of basic public services and the function of core institutions, meriting far more attention in international discourse on Taiwan than they currently receive.
Absent legislative and judicial channels for change, Lai may seek to rely more heavily on anti-China rhetoric to animate his sovereignty-minded base, which could contribute to increased tensions in the region. The stakes are high. Although many democracies are experiencing institutional decline amid growing polarization, few must navigate these challenges with a smaller margin of error than Taiwan.
