Margaret Y. K. Woo and Mary E. Gallagher, eds., Chinese Justice: Civil Dispute Resolution in Contemporary China

Excerpt

In their introductory chapter, Woo and Gallagher explain their approach, which is informed by the general trend of the “law and society” scholarship in western academia, and aims to analyze the process of law in action rather than just those in books and statues. The rest of the volume is organized by three themes. The first theme discusses the evolution of the Chinese judiciary and especially its relationship (tensions) with other institutions or actors. In the first chapter, Fu and Cullen discuss the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) general preference for mediation in resolving civil disputes, where judges were expected to be active and inquisitorial. Since late 1980s, however, this paradigm was replaced by what was considered a more professional “adjudicatory” paradigm, necessitated by the increasing professionalism of judicial personnel and the increasing problems associated with mediation, such as corruption and ineffectiveness. Under the new paradigm, professional training of judges and new emphasis on procedure and evidence rules were introduced. These reforms, however, also were blamed for increasing citizens’ expectation (and hence the number of civil disputes), judicial bureaucratization, and the distancing of the judiciary from public concerns. As a response, the CCP has reemphasized mediation. In the next chapter, Minzer explores the ways in which provincial and local judges are evaluated and promoted. Chinese judges at lower levels receive a deduction of points, which are important for annual performance evaluation and career promotion, if they have committed errors in their decisions, meaning that the decision was reversed at a higher level. This encourages many of them to consult higher-level judges, which perverts the appellate review process and burdens higher-level judges. The Supreme People’s Court (SPC) in 1998 issued directives that outlawed these practices, yet many continued to contravene these directives. Minzer argues that the reason was that different incentives exist—the local judiciaries have to respond to the CCP’s evaluation more than to the SPC’s directives. …