According to Wang, her statement had to be made after legislators recently grilled President Ma's choice for the new state public prosecutor-general, Huang Shih-ming, about why capital punishment sentences had not been carried out on 44 convicted felons.

Wang said she would leave office, die or go to hell rather than sign any orders executing a convicted defendant.

Wang is certainly free to believe whatever she likes and it's true that many countries in the world have recently abolished the death penalty.

However, Wang is wrong to make this high-profile stand, throwing her gauntlet at her own government colleagues.

Since Wang is not willing to carry out what are the laws of this land, the obvious thing she should do is immediately resign her position as minister of justice.

After all, the justice minister is in charge of carrying out the law, not making laws.

It is the Legislative Yuan, whose members are elected by the people, which makes the laws of this land and send them to the president for promulgation.

By holding her present position and refusing to carry out any executions, Wang is usurping the verdicts lawfully handed down by the nation's courts.

If Wang is determined to eliminate the death penalty, she should join the growing number of private citizens demanding that the Legislative Yuan pass a new law, or revise existing laws, to abolish it.

Her stance of refusing to carry out the law as it stands at this moment in time is a violation of her constitutional duty.

If Wang believes that a convict was wrongly sentenced to death, or that the court trials producing death penalties suffered from mistakes of fact or mistakes of law, she already possesses the power to order an extraordinary appeal of specific cases.

What she does not possess is the power to decide which of the nation's laws she wants to enforce, and which of the nation's laws she doesn't want to enforce.

Instead of doing things the right way by resigning and encouraging legislative action, she has tossed a hot-button issue on to the front burner, creating headaches for the government while not providing any solution for the problem.

The obvious solution to this problem is to have the Legislative Yuan make an up-or-down vote on the capital punishment issue. Some have suggested holding a public referendum on whether to abolish capital punishment.

But even if such a referendum were held, legislative action would still be required to carry out the people's wishes in the event that most people voted to scrap the death penalty.

That is because public referenda are not legally binding on the nation's laws.

Only the nation's sole lawmaking body, the Legislative Yuan, may approve, change or abolish laws.

As a member of the executive branch of government, the justice minister is only responsible for executing the laws as they are made by the legislature and approved by the president.

If the president does not approve of a law passed by the legislature, there is a constitutional process of seeking redress involving a request for reconsideration that, if refused, results in the Cabinet's resignation and new legislative elections.

Individual Cabinet ministers don't have a line-item veto to enforce laws they like and not enforce laws they don't like.

Without taking a stance on the death penalty itself, it is still easy to understand why Wang is not handling this issue correctly.

If the foreign minister disagreed with a budget approved by the legislature granting a certain amount of foreign aid to a certain country, could the foreign minister refuse to execute the budget and keep the money in the government's coffers?

Clearly, the answer is “no.”

If the law permits anyone 18 years of age to obtain a driver's license, and the transport minister thinks the age should be 20, may the minister refuse to hand out licenses to anyone under 20?

Again, the obvious answer is “no.”

The death penalty is an issue involving life and death and certainly is far more serious than money or a driver's license.

However, the constitutional principals and checks and balances that stand behind the division of governmental powers are the same.