The right to institute legal actions referred to in Article 16 of the Constitution is available when the people’s rights are infringed and fair legal proceedings may be resorted to in seeking certain remedy from the courts.　The trial instances, procedures and relevant requisites to be followed by the legal actions shall be justified by the legislative authority under laws by taking into consideration the type, nature and purpose of the legal actions, as well as the function of litigious systems.　According to the provisions of Article 466 of the Code of Civil Procedure with respect to appeal against the court’s judgment of the second trial instance in a case concerning property rights, whether an appeal is claimable against the judgment of the second trial instance should depend on whether the concerned party’s benefit arising from the appeal will exceed a specific amount or not.　In other words, because legislators want to avoid wasting the limited national judicial resources, they have to examine the function of the remedial system at the third trial instance and the attributes of the matters, in order to establish the relationship of private law and to maintain fair and reasonable restrictions under the social order; therefore, no violation of Articles 16 and 23 of the Constitution is constituted.

　　　 Upon amendments to Article 466 of the Code of Civil Procedure to increase the specific amount of benefit arising from appeal against the judgment of the second trial instance, any concerned parties who filed an appeal against the judgment of the second trial instance after the amendments became effective shall, in principle, apply the post-amendment Article 466 of the Code of Civil Procedure without retroaction, provided that for the cases in which the concerned parties who have acquired the rights to institute legal actions pursuant to laws fail to file the appeal under the newly amended requirements against the judgment of the second trial instance being rendered due to amendments to Article 466 of the Code of Civil Procedure that increase the specific amount of the benefit arising from appeal against the judgment of the second trial instance, it is likely to have material impact on the people’s trust interest for no retroaction can be applied.　Therefore, in order to ensure the public interest and protect the concerned parties’ trust, Article 8 of the Enforcement Act of the Code of Civil Procedure provides, as a transitional provision, that “An appeal may be filed against the judgment rendered prior to enforcement of amendments to the Code of Civil Procedure, where such appeal is allowable under the provisions prior to the increase in the specific amount of benefit as provided in Article 466 upon enforcement of the amended Code.”　In other words, this is not contradictory to the non-retroactive and trust protection principles adopted by a rule-of-law nation.

　　　 The precedent rendered by the Supreme Court under (74) Tai-Kang-Tze No. 174 and the first civil tribunal meeting of the Supreme Court on January 14, 1997, resolved that: “Where the specific amount of the benefit as provided in Paragraph 1 of Article 466 of the Code of Civil Procedure is increased, according to Article 8 of the Enforcement Act of the Code of Civil Procedure, the appeal is allowed subject to the original limitation on the specific amount only when the judgment at issue is rendered prior to the increase in the specific amount.　Where the judgment at issue is rendered after that, whether an appeal may be filed against the judgment shall be subject to the increased specific amount, even if the judgment is a new judgment rendered by the court of the third trial instance.”　The aforementioned is intended as a ruling that the contents of Paragraph 1 of Article 466 of the Code of Civil Procedure and Article 8 of the Enforcement Act of the Code of Civil Procedure are not contradictory to the intent of the Constitution.　Accordingly, they do not violate Article 7, 16 or 23 of the Constitution, nor are they contradictory to the non-retroactive and trust protection principles adopted by a rule-of-law nation.

　　　 The right to institute legal action referred to in Article 16 of the Constitution is available when people are entitled to seek remedies from courts in accordance with justified legal proceedings after their rights are infringed.　The state shall provide effective systems to protect this right, so as to ensure the right.　The legislative authorities shall enact appropriate laws governing the courts’ organization and proceedings.　The courts shall also aim at protecting the right when applying the relevant laws, so that the people’s right may be restored in a timely manner when their rights are infringed.　Where the proceedings do not prejudice the core content of the right to initiate legal actions, the legislators shall enact various reasonable requirements concerning the proceedings by taking into account the requirement of valid protection provided in the Constitution and the nature of cases, and this is not considered to be a violation of the protection of the right to initiate legal action (See J.Y. Interpretation No. 442).

　　　 The trial-instance system constitutes a part of the procedure.　According to the internal monitoring mechanism under the judicial remedial system, the upper-instance court has the right to correct the rulings rendered by the lower-instance court.　The number of trial instances shall be determined by the legislative authority in consideration of the nature of cases and function of the legal system.　Therefore, it is not necessarily the case that the intent of protecting the people’s right to initiate legal action referred to in the Constitution will be complied with only when cases are appealed to the third trial instance for the protection of rights to initiate legal action (See J.Y. Interpretations Nos. 396, 442 and 512).

　　　 Taiwan’s Code of Civil Procedure applies the remedial system subject to trial instance, namely the three trial instances.　Nevertheless, though the third trial instance provides the remedial function, the trial is carried out in terms of laws, which focuses on integrating the interpretation and application of laws, so as to keep the legal opinion consistent.　Therefore, the legislative authority may determine the procedural requirements for appeal to the court of third instance by taking the nature of cases into account.　Paragraph 1 of Article 466 of the Code of Civil Procedure, amended and promulgated on February 3, 1999, provides that: “No appeal may be lodged against the judgment of the court of first instance in a case concerning property rights if the benefit arising from such appeal does not exceed 600,000 yuan [New Taiwan Dollars].”　Accordingly, whether a concerned party may appeal to the court of third instance will be subject to whether the benefit to arise from the appeal against the judgment of the court of second instance will exceed the specific amount.　This is a reasonable limitation on the procedure for the people’s exercise of the right to initiate legal action.　Following the growth of our economy and national income, commodity prices and monetary claims have risen comparatively, and the number of cases concerning property rights handled by the court of third instance has increased dramatically. Therefore, the trial in terms of laws to be conducted in the third instance has been seriously affected.　Given this, the said provisions were amended on February 9, 2000, to raise the benefit to 1,000,000 yuan [New Taiwan Dollars], in order to distribute limited judicial resources reasonably and to establish the relationship　among private laws to maintain the justified limitation for the purpose of social order, without contradicting Articles 16 and 23 of the Constitution.

　　　 According to the doctrine of a rule-of-law nation, the basic principles of a constitution shall first guarantee the people’s rights, stability of the legal order and compliance with the principle of trust protection.　Therefore, once laws are amended, unless the laws provide special requirements for retroactivity, the laws shall be effective as of the date when they are promulgated.　Nevertheless, human life is of a continuous nature; therefore, though new laws, which are not retroactive, are applicable to the constitutional facts fulfilled after the new laws become effective, the life order established by people under the old laws is inevitably affected.　In such circumstances, without prejudicing the equity of laws, legislators may enact requirements at their sole discretion, provided that if the right and reasonable trust deriving therefrom acquired by the people prior to amendments of the laws are affected adversely due to the amendments, legislators shall enact certain transitional provisions to exclude the application of new laws, or shall take other reasonable measures, in order to comply with the principles of stability and trust protection of a rule-of- law nation.

　　　 According to Paragraph 1 of Article 466 of the Code of Civil Procedure amended on February 9, 2000 (hereinafter referred to as “the new Code”), the benefit to arise from appeal to the court of third instance was increased and no special requirement for retroactivity was provided.　Therefore, the amended provision was effective after the new Code was promulgated.　However, if any concerned party has lodged legal action in the court of first instance pursuant to laws, or the court of first instance has rendered its judgment, or the concerned party has appealed to the court of second instance and the appeal is pending, or has appealed to the court of third instance and resumed the procedure for the second instance after the original judgment was revoked by the court of third instance, before the amendments to the Code became effective, the relevant procedures for the case would inevitably be affected after the new Code became effective. The value of an object in an action appealed to the court of third instance for cases concerning property rights shall be determined subject to the object amount specified in the claim of the appeal or the amount claimed in the complaint (See Paragraph 4 of Article 466 and Paragraph 2 of Article 77-1 of the Code of Civil Procedure).　The said value of an object in an action is the appellant’s benefit arising from the claim of an appeal, which is different from the objective value determined subject to the claim of the plaintiff’s complaint.　The court of second instance shall ex officio determine whether the value of an object in an action complies with Article 466 of the Code of Civil Procedure when examining the legal requisites for appeal to the third instance, regardless of the value of the object determined by the court of first instance.　If the court of second instance considers that the value of the object does not exceed the statutory amount, it shall deny the appeal to the third instance by rendering a judgment stating that no appeal is allowed, provided that, where the appellant files an appeal, the court of third instance may still consider the amount, regardless of that determined by the court of second instance.　Given this, the concerned party’s benefit deriving from the appeal will not be determined until the court of first instance renders its judgment, as it can not be determined immediately when the complaint is lodged initially.　If the original judgment is abandoned after the appeal filed to the third instance is considered groundless by the court of third instance, the judgment of the second instance shall become invalid by the judgment of the court of third instance, and the court of second instance shall render a new judgment. Whether an appeal may be filed against the new judgment rendered by the court of second instance shall be subject to the outcome of the new judgment.　Therefore, assuming that the new judgment is rendered by the court of second instance after the increase in the amount referred to in Paragraph 1 of Article 466 of the new Code, no appeal can be filed against the new judgment if the benefit arising from the appeal against the judgment is not considered to be in excess of the increased amount.　This can be evidenced by this court’s interpretation No. 2446.　Given this, since the new judgment is not the original judgment, which has been overturned, no appeal shall be filed against the new judgment rendered by the court of second instance after the court of third instance has revoked the original judgment, pursuant to the general principle for application of law, after the new Code was promulgated.　This does not breach the principle of equity provided under the Constitution.　Meanwhile, the concerned party cannot claim that he or she relies on the requirement prior to the amendment that allows him or her to file an appeal against the original judgment of the court of second instance in an attempt to claim the retroactivity of the new Code regarding infringement of his or her existing benefit arising from the appeal.　In such a circumstance, if the legislators do not enact any transitional provisions to enable the new Code to be applied immediately and comprehensively, they still can retain free discretion.　However, though the relevant procedures for the case would be affected after the new Code became effective, if the judgment of the court of second instance was rendered before the new Code became effective and the concerned party failed to file an appeal which should be claimable pursuant to Paragraph 1 of Article 466 of the former Code of Civil Procedure, but filed an appeal to the court of third instance after the amended Code became effective, and the court of second instance or third instance rejected his or her appeal reasoning that the benefit to arise from the appeal did not exceed the specific amount referred to in the new Code, the concerned party’s right to file an appeal to the court of third instance under Paragraph 1 of Article 466 of the former Code of Civil Procedure and the reasonable trust deriving therefrom would have inevitably been infringed. Under the circumstance, if the legislators did not enact any transitional provisions to exclude the application of the amended Code to the said circumstance after it became effective, there would have been the likelihood of violation of the Constitution for breach of the trust principle.　Article 8 of the Law Governing the Enforcement of the Code of Civil Procedure provides that judgments made prior to the enforcement of the amended Code of Civil Procedure may be subject to appeal if they are appealable in accordance with the former laws, provided that the amount fixed in Paragraph 1 of Article 466 as a limitation to appeals is raised after the enforcement of the amended Code of Civil Procedure.　This can be considered as a transitional provision enacted by the legislators in terms of the nature of the civil cases and the function of trial at law in the third instance and in order to protect the vested interest of the concerned party in filing an appeal to the court of third instance pursuant to Paragraph 1 of Article 466 of the former Code of Civil Procedure, which is not contradictory to their free discretion to enact transitional provisions or the trust principle applied by a rule-of-law nation.

　　　 The precedent rendered by the Supreme Court under (74) Tai-Kang-Tze No. 174 and the first civil tribunal meeting of the Supreme Court on January 14, 1997, resolved that: “Where the specific amount of the benefit as provided in Paragraph 1 of Article 466 of the Code of Civil Procedure is increased, according to Article 8 of the Law Governing the Enforcement of the Code of Civil Procedure, the appeal is allowed subject to the original limitation on the specific amount only when the judgment at issue is rendered prior to the increase in the specific amount.　Where the judgment at issue is rendered after that, whether an appeal may be filed against the judgment shall be subject to the increased specific amount, even if the judgment is a new judgment rendered by the court of the third instance”.　The aforementioned is intended as a ruling that the contents of Paragraph 1 of Article 466 of the Code of Civil Procedure and Article 8 of the Law Governing the Enforcement of the Code of Civil Procedure are not contradictory to the intent of the Constitution.　Accordingly, they do not violate Article 7, 16 or 23 of the Constitution, nor are they contradictory to the non-retroactive and trust principles adopted by a rule-of-law nation.