China’s Judicial System
The Functions of Courts
• Authoritarian judiciaries have been found
to
• establish social control
• promote regime legitimacy
• control administrative agents
• facilitate economic development
• help to implement controversial policies
Broadly speaking ...
• China’s judicial system includes:
– People’s Courts
– People’s Procuratorates
– Public Security organs
What do they report to?
People’s Court
People’s Procuratorate
People’s Congress
Government
(including Public Security organs)
Effective Party Control
• Political-Legal Committees at every level
of the Chinese Communist Party hierarchy
• versus the goal of “judicial
professionalism”
– courts should be staffed and operated by
legally trained judges
– the influence of non-lawyers or extra-legal
concerns on adjudication should be kept to a
minimum
Strictly speaking ...
• The judicial system only includes the
People’s Court system
• The People’s Court System includes:
– Supreme People’s Court
– Local People’s Courts
– Special Courts
• 10 Maritime Courts
• 75 Railway Courts (became local courts in 2012)
• Military Courts
4 Levels of People’s Courts
Court
Supreme People’s Court
Higher People’s Court
Intermediate People’s Court
Basic People’s Court
level
Center
Province
City
County or district
Hierarchy of the Judicial System
• In common law systems, a decision made
by a superior court is a binding precedent
that all inferior courts are required to follow
• In China, as in other continental legal
systems, this doctrine of binding
precedents is not applied
• However, the appeal mechanism in effect
renders the decisions of higher courts
binding on lower courts
Hierarchy of the Judicial System
• The Chinese four-level court system only
allows one appeal to be made to a court of
higher ranking
• which minimizes the impact of the
provincial high courts’ or the Supreme
People’s Court’s decisions on those of
lower level courts
Hierarchy of the Judicial System
• Compared with the organization of
judiciaries in other countries
• there appears to be a gap in the formal
legal control over lower courts by
provincial high courts and the Supreme
People’s Court
Judicial Reforms since 1990s
• predominantly carried out in a top-down
manner
• Courts have developed into specialized
legal institutions that are staffed by legally
trained judges
• Chinese courts have expanded their
jurisdiction and their caseloads have
proliferated significantly
1st Trial Cases
Administrative Litigation Law
• Passed in April 1989 and implemented in
October 1990
• Gives the court the power to uphold,
revoke, revise, or compel administrative
actions
• One of the few state-sanctioned means for
private citizens to challenge the actions of
government officials on many regulatory
and administrative issues
Administrative Litigation Cases
Plaintiffs in Admin. Litig. Cases
After 17th Party Congress (’07)
• The Central Political-Legal Committee
adopted a new document on judicial
reform
• The “three supremes” doctrine:
1.the supremacy of the CCP
2.the supremacy of the people’s interests
3.the supremacy of the constitution and law
Populist Turn of Judicial Reform
• Judges are reminded of the need to
consider the social and political
consequences of their judgments
• To achieve a “harmonious society” and
social stability, mediation is regarded as a
more suitable tool than litigation
The Qi Yuling case (2001)
• In 2001, the Supreme People’s Court
attempted to judicialize the constitution in
the form of a “reply” to a provincial higher
people’s court
• In 2008, the Supreme People’s Court
repealed the “reply”
• Constitutionality