China's Courts: Restricted Reform

Abstract

China's courts have in recent years engaged in significant reforms designed to raise the quality of their work. Yet such top-down reforms have been largely technical and are not designed to alter courts' power. Courts have also encountered new challenges, including rising populist pressures, which may undermine their authority. The most important changes in China's courts have come from the ground up: local courts have engaged in significant innovation, and horizontal interaction among judges is facilitating the development of professional identity. Recent developments have largely avoided two central questions facing China's courts: why have courts been permitted to develop even limited new roles, and what additional roles, if any, may they play within the Chinese political system?

Information Differentiation, Commercialization and Legal Reform

“…The quality of judges also improved significantly. In 1995, only 6.9 percent of judges had university degrees while more than 50 percent of judges had university degrees by mid-2005 (Liebman, 2007).…”

“…Two years later, the Supreme People's Court issued the first five-year plan for legal reform and then a second fiveyear plan in 2005 to strengthen the courts. In the normative sense, the state has devoted itself to developing the court's capacity to handle routine cases* those fairly non-sensitive cases and non-state-centered conflicts*without challenging the single-party regime (Clarke, 2007;Liebman, 2005Liebman, , 2007Lubman, 1999). Courts were designed as a safety valve for a widening range of popular complaints because ''permitting grievances to be raised through class actions, administrative litigation or even (in a small number of cases) constitutional litigation may be preferable to such complaints not being heard at all*or being raised on the street'' (Liebman, 2007, p. 635).…”

“…Courts were designed as a safety valve for a widening range of popular complaints because ''permitting grievances to be raised through class actions, administrative litigation or even (in a small number of cases) constitutional litigation may be preferable to such complaints not being heard at all*or being raised on the street'' (Liebman, 2007, p. 635). As a result, since the market reform in the late 1970s, the rapid growth of alternative legal service providers has initiated significant increases in the number of lawyers, law schools and laws (Clarke, 2007;Liebman, 2007;Liu, 2009;Q. Zhang, 2003).…”

“…On the one hand, the state used the media to promote its ''rule of law'' reform. On the other hand, the state simultaneously managed to secure the courts' loyalty to the party by controlling the funding and personnel of the courts and by initiating several media campaigns (Liebman, 2007). The role of courts in present-day China is still quite limited.…”

The Role of the State, Labour Policy and Migrant Workers’ Struggles in Globalized China

“…Lower courts continue to depend on funding from local governments, and local judges lack autonomy and independence to uphold the law, especially in cases where outcomes are contrary to powerful interests. Despite the fact that the lower courts are increasingly reaching out to other courts of equal rank for guidance in making difficult legal decisions -an impressive development of 'horizontal networking' between the courts in fostering legal innovations -extensive external interference from higher courts and party officials persists (Liebman 2007). Under these circumstances, workers' rights often end at the courtroom door.…”