By Shen Nianzu (沈念祖)
Issue 570, May 21, 2012
Nation, Page 10
Translated by Tang Xiangyang
Original article [Chinese]

Had it not been for the training course at the National Judges College (国家法官学院), Sun Xin (孙欣), Chen Yong (陈勇) and Wang Hongwei (王红卫) would never have met.

As deputy presidents at city-level intermediate courts in Jiangsu Province and Tianjin Municipality, they would normally have been working overtime in their offices.

This is a two-week training session for deputy presidents - the second ranking members on the main decision making body in a Chinese court, the adjudication committee.

The aim of the training program is to improve the professional skills of these presidents-in-training. But for the trainees, it is in fact a break from their tedious daily work.

Work Overload

The vice presidents are all used to rushing around. Even though he was on the training course, Sun Xin had to miss the weekend sessions because some urgent work came up in Hainan. 

“[The course] is a precious opportunity for me to put aside all the work, but I have to go [to Hainan].”

The courses on the training program include policy, professional skills, anti-corruption and leadership. As well as lectures, there are group discussions, forums and study trips.

“Pressure” is a word that comes up again and again in conversations with the judges. “The largest source of pressure is the number of cases that we have to deal with. We have to work overtime almost every day,” said Wang Hongwei.

According to media reports, each judge has to deal with an average of 300 cases a year.

At the busiest court in the country, Dongguan No. 1 People's Court in the huge south eastern manufacturing towns, each judge has to give four to five judgments every day. One judge at a low-tier court once dealt with over 1,600 cases in a year.

But the biggest pressure comes from having to reach a verdict that the people see as fair.

“In the past, as long as there were no mistakes, everything would be OK; but now it’s not enough just to avoid mistakes. As well as going through the legal procedures and applying the law, we have to build an image of authority, convince people and make them willing to accept the verdict,” Sun Xin said.

He gave one case as an example, saying “it was easy to reach a judgment, but if we had enforced it, the victim’s child would have suffered since he has a mental illness but no income. So we sought government aid for him.”

Public opinion also counts. One judge from Shanxi Province commented: “The media reports don’t stand for public opinion. They rarely help; they’re always about scandals. The unfair reports put huge pressure on the judges. Some of them even have to resign.”

Procedural Justice

Zhang Jun, deputy president of the Supreme People’s Court, stressed that judges should care about procedural justice, consistency and transparency in reaching verdicts.

“Many cases are misreported by the media because of the absence of procedural justice. We didn’t do what we should have done. We didn’t treat lawyers fairly. So some unscrupulous lawyers accuse the court or ignore the court’s judgments. Once those cases are made public, no one shows faith in the court; they only believe the lawyers even though they’re talking nonsense.”

Zhang Jun also mentioned the low ratio of witnesses who show-up in the court - currently it’s only 2 percent to 3 percent - and attributed these figures to the fears of procurators and judges that witnesses who speak in court may contradict their written testimony.

“One famous national case had no witness at all,” he said.

Zhang Jun said that there are two reasons why judges are struggling to control the courts. Firstly, although Chinese courts have, in theory, been following a more adversarial trial system since the late 1990s, they’re still inquisitorial in practice, meaning that hearings are usually very structured.

This explains why judges after taken off guard when hearings become unruly.

“I once received a call from a deputy president in Jiangsu Province. He said the lawyers were too difficult to control and asked for suggestions. He didn’t even know that the Civil Procedure Law allows judges to warn lawyers who cause a disturbance in a court, or even force them to leave. If a president doesn’t know the law, how can we expect judges to control the court?”

Another problem is the lack of a single authoritative judge at each hearing. Unless this is changed, we can’t expect the judges to be able to control the courts.

Taking responsibility

The last session of the training was “How to be a good deputy president?” The main message was to cooperate with the president and build a harmonious working environment. However, as the class began, all the deputy presidents asked, laughing, ‘Why not teach us to be a good president?’

Chen Weidong (陈卫东), a professor with the National Judges College, said he was puzzled about who should be the chief judge of a case.

“We have a very strange system; deputy presidents and presidents are higher than judges. They are the real chief judges. So judges have to leave the decision-making to the deputy presidents and presidents,” Chen said, adding they have to take some risks when ruling on cases.

Zhan Zhongle (湛中乐), a law professor with Peking University, said judges should be entirely independent and free from administrative duties. “Under the current system of collective responsibility, no one dares take any responsibility.”

 
Some of those studying to be judges said they didn’t need to be taught how to handle a case because it’s what they did every day. However, they were hoping that the training would help solve particular problems, such as keeping control of the courtroom.

 
Links and Sources
East Asia Forum China and its Adjudication Committees