從法律非決定性探討法律縫隙的政治意涵 —以我國上級法院解僱裁判為例—

Abstract

本研究所探討法律非決定性現象，意指法律規定不能充分決定裁判的結論。本文為求對於我國裁判實務的運作能有更清楚的掌握，因此選擇上級法院（包含最高法院與高等法院）的解僱判決作為探討法律非決定性的例子。根據我們的分析顯示，即便是執司統一全國裁判見解的最高法院，對於解僱裁判的法律規定仍有不一致的看法。舉例來說，勞動基準法第十一條第二款允許雇主於業務緊縮時合法解僱勞工，但在此種情況是否可類推適用同法第四款的規定，要求雇主在解僱前先設法安置勞工以代解僱，最高法院對此項議題的見解並不一致。 鑑於我國傳統的法教義學未能對此現象提出一套合理的解釋，因此本文借重三項對此議題曾提出深刻洞見的美國法理論，分別是美國法律現實主義(American Legal Realism)、德沃金(Ronald Dworkin)的法律建構詮釋論與Duncan Kennedy的裁判批判理論，以深化本文對此議題的掌握。首先，美國法律現實主義認為任何法律規定均可進行相互矛盾的法律解釋，因而肯定法律非決定性的存在，不過他們並未能提出一套克服此問題的方案，僅指出在裁判中存在著政策考量的空間。 相對於法律現實主義，德沃金則採取否定法律非決定性的立場，因為他的法律建構詮釋論底下，他所創設的理想法官海克力斯在面對艱難案件時，可以透過理想化的友愛社群之政治道德，獲得正確且融貫的裁判規範依據。然而，Kennedy似乎是採取追隨法律現實主義與反對德沃金過度理想化的立場，不過實際上Kennedy則是更進一步主張應該揚棄過去關於法律非決定性的討論，因為先前的理論都把焦點擺在法律規範上，忽略了法律規範結構與詮釋者之間的互動關係，尤其是詮釋者本身的立場。就Kennedy看來，在美國的政治脈絡中，造成法律非決定性的主要因素乃政治光譜上自由派與保守派的持續政治衝突，以及雙方利用法院的論壇所進行的敵對法律論述攻防。換言之，當面對不清楚的法律規定時，我們不可能僅透過精確操作法律解釋即能解決問題，因為它所開啟的不只是不同的論述空間，而是潛藏政治鬥爭的法律縫隙。 透過上述理論分析，我們採取Kennedy對於法律非決定性的觀點，並且利用他以美國法律實踐為背景所提出衝突法律論述架構，按照勞動法中恆常對立的勞資關係，重新形構我國解僱裁判的相關法律規定之詮釋論述。鑑於我國的政治運作普遍存在不利於勞工權益保障的現實，我們認為有必要提出強化勞工利益保護的論述，而前述的理論探討，可以讓我們更有信心地放棄按照傳統法學方法所強調的四平八穩的法律解釋，並且更積極的採取有利於勞工的法律論述建構策略。 本研究企圖透過法律非決定性的探討，為弱勢者尋求建立進步法律論述的空間。儘管本文在具體的議題上，僅擇取解僱裁判作為探討的對象，但我們相信在其他法律領域中，應該也有類此現象的存在，因此，未來進一步的研究應該拓展至其他法領域，並對其主流論述進行更積極的挑戰。

The purpose of the study is to investigate the phenomenon of legal indeterminacy which means that legal rules cannot determine the result of adjudication. In order to have a better understanding of the practice of the adjudication in Taiwan, this research takes the dismissal cases of higher courts, including Supreme Court and Taiwan High Court, as an example. By parsing through these legal opinions, we find that even Supreme Court, which is supposed to unify all different legal opinions of higher courts, does not consistently maintain its interpretation of certain legal rules. For example, Art.11 (b) of Labor Standard Act allows employers to dismiss employees when the employer’s business suffers an operation loss or contraction; nonetheless, the courts do not coherently demonstrate whether these employers are required to offer other suitable but lower-paid positions instead of dismissing employees right away. Since the traditional legal methodology cannot properly explain the phenomenon, the discussion of legal indeterminacy in American legal theories offers us a better perspective to re-evaluate this issue. Therefore, we chose American legal realism, Ronald Dworkin’s legal interpretative theory, and Duncan Kennedy’s critical legal theory to improve our comprehension of the issue. The realists focus on the contradictory interpretative skills of legal rules and confirm the existence of legal indeterminacy. However, they failed to overcome the problems caused by legal indeterminacy though proposed a new approach of policy-thinking in adjudication. Contrary to legal realism, Dworkin denies the phenomenon of legal indeterminacy. Under his constructive interpretative model, the ideal judge Hercules always can correctly and coherently decide hard cases by referring an unclear rule to the political morality of an idealized fraternal community so as to clarify the proper meaning of the rule. Nevertheless, Kennedy’s theory seems to follow the realism’s idea of legal indeterminacy by rejecting Dworkin’s theory for his idealism, but Kennedy actually encourages us to give up the discussion about legal indeterminacy and shifts the focus to the complex interaction between legal interpreters and structure of legal rule. He demonstrates that the previous discussion misleads us to concern only legal rules and prevents us from tackling the main issue, which is the ideological conflict between legal interpreters. According to Kennedy’s analysis, the key factor of the phenomenon of legal indeterminacy in the U.S. is the constant political conflicts between liberals and conservatives in the court forum by fighting against each other with opposite legal discourses. In other words, we cannot resolve the obscurity of legal rules merely by precise interpretative skills because it opens not only different discourses but also legal gaps for political conflicts. Following Kennedy’s idea which can offer a better explanation of legal indeterminacy, we utilize his conflicting legal discoursive structure in the American legal context as a model and reformulate the interpretation of relevant legal rules of dismissal cases in Taiwan by referring to the opposite view points of labor and employer. This model emphasizes the continuous tensions between conflicting interests and gives up to offer a fair interpretation of the rules as the traditional legal methodology requires. Under this new model, we can liberate legal scholars and practioners from the constraints of conventional interpretative model which over-emphasizes the logic and consistency of the interpretative process in legal reasoning. Then we will be more confident to construct a pro-labor strategy for creating flexible legal discourses in the court forum under the contra-labor political context in Taiwan. This study proposes to build up more progressive legal discourse for the disadvantaged after advancing our understanding of the key factor of legal indeterminacy, though it focuses merely on the dismissal cases. We believe that the same possibility should exist in other legal fields and encourage further researches to challenge the mainstream legal discourse.