VI. Expanding Judicial Democracy

Safeguarding the people’s participation in judiciary not only embodies the people-oriented Socialist judicial system with Chinese characteristics, but also is an objective requirement for the improvement of judicial credibility and the expansion of judicial democracy. The SPC has enhanced the recognition and trust of the public to the judiciary by means of reforming people’s assessors system, improving the acceptance system of supervision by case parties, and strengthening the comprehensiveness, orderliness and efficacy of accessing to, participating in and supervising judiciary by the people.

To carry out pilot reforms of people’s assessors system. In May 2015, according to the authorization of the Standing Committee of the NPC, the SPC and the Ministry of Justice have promulgated the and launched pilot work in 50 courts in 10 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities directly under central government) of China. The pilot works include: to reform the selection and appointment conditions of people’s assessors, to improve the selection and appointment method, to expand the scope of trial participation, to define the duties of trial participation, to strengthen professional guarantee, to build exit mechanism, to give full play to the advantages of the familiarity of people’s assessors over social conditions and people’s opinions, and to gradually change the current situation of people’s assessors participating in the voting of law application into that people’s assessors shall only participate in the facts finding, etc. Up to November 8, 2015, the selection and appointment of people’s assessors in all pilot courts have been completed successively, which added over 7,800 new people’s assessors. The total number of people’s assessors has been increased to about 4 times of that of the quota judges. The diversity and representativeness of people’s assessors has been enhanced to a further level. All pilot courts have established the information database of people’s assessors, and have been continuously strengthening the pre-work training and daily management of people’s assessors. Pursuant to the requirements of the judicial reform, all pilot courts have been proactively improving the mechanism of participation in trial by people’s assessors. These courts generally explore a large panel with the participation of more than 3 people’s assessors through random selection, which plays a significant role in adjudicating major cases attracting wide attention such as land requisition and demolishing, environmental protection and food and drug safety. The number of cases with participation in trial by people’s assessors reaches 35,000, among which there are nearly 100 cases handled by a large panel with the participation of more than 5 people including judges and people’s assessors. Pilot courts in Heilongjiang Province and Shandong Province adopt a method of “directional classification, quotas control, random generation” to effectively solve the problems of uneven distribution, structure imbalance and trial participation inconvenience caused by random selection. Pilot courts in Chongqing has been actively promoting facts recognition list system, facts recognition direction system, two-stage tribunal deliberation system and mutual responsibility of facts recognition system, and obtains sound effect. Mentougou Primary People’s Court of Beijing, Shaanxi Huayin People’s Court and Xixia County People’s Courts of Henan have explored the practice of a panel consisting of 4 people’s assessors and 3 judges to openly try a portion of cases with relatively great social influence which are well received by the local people.

To build communications and contact platform for NPC members and CPPCC members. In order to comprehensively listen to and timely respond to the opinions and suggestions made by the NPC members and CPPCC members, the SPC has launched a communication platform for the NPC members and CPPCC members on January 1, 2014, containing such columns as contact work news, suggestions by and response to NPC members, proposal by and response to CPPCC members, and major cases circulation. This platform has formed an all-day communication channel between the SPC and the NPC members and CPPCC members.

To improve the acceptance system of supervision by case parties. In July 2014, the SPC has promulgated the which require the people’s courts to strictly comply with the integrity disciplines, constantly improve the judicial style, carry out integrity supervision card and integrity callback systems and voluntarily accept the parties’ supervision on their trial and enforcement activities. The case handling department of a people’s court shall send an integrity supervision card to a party when it serves the legal documents of case acceptance on a party. The supervision departments of the people’s courts shall randomly select a portion of cases from the trial or enforcement cases concluded within the year to carry out integrity callback, together with the handling departments of the respective cases. The supervision opinions provided by the case parties shall be dealt with in a timely manner. The results thereof shall be given back to the case parties concerned in due time.