Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T18:10:30.190Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“Detaching” Courts from Local Politics? Assessing the Judicial Centralization Reforms in China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 July 2020

Yueduan Wang
Yueduan Wang*
Affiliation:
Harvard Law School. Email: [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The local party-state has always been a major source of extrajudicial influence in China. Drawing on interviews with judges, this article examines the impact of Xi Jinping's ambitious judicial centralization reforms, which are aimed at enhancing judicial autonomy by transferring authority over local court personnel and finances from local to provincial level. It finds that the reforms have achieved limited results. Although many appointment and budgetary powers were formally transferred to the provincial level, the local party-state retains considerable influence in both areas owing to its superior manpower, local knowledge and, in the case of developed regions, financial resources. Moreover, the local party-state maintains significant informal influence over the courts, which require many forms of discretionary assistance from various state organs – ranging from appropriating land for new courthouses to providing police protection for remote tribunals – in order to function. This setback highlights the depth and complexity of the courts’ political and economic embeddedness and serves as a reminder of the inherent difficulty of institutionalizing judicial autonomy, however limited, in a large and diverse party-state.

摘要

摘要

地方党政机关的不当干预向来被认为是困扰中国司法的一个严重问题。通过对各地法官的采访，本文试图检视当前政府所推行的司法机关人财物权上收改革是否有效减少了地方政治对司法的介入。从调研结论来看，这一改革只取得了较为有限的成果。虽然地方法院的人事权和财政权名义上都被上收到了省一级，但地方党政机关所拥有的人力、财力和地方性知识使其得以在相当程度上保留了在人事和财政上对司法机关的影响力。另外，由于地方法院在日常工作中仍然需要各个地方行政机构在土地规划、警力调度等方面的协助与配合，因此必须继续与地方政府保持一种非正式的联系。司法改革面临的这些困境体现了法院与地方政治、经济环境的紧密联系，并凸显了在中国这类超大型国家中将司法从政治中剥离的难度。

Keywords

judicial reformjudicial independencecentral–local relationsChinacentralizationembeddedness司法改革司法独立中央与地方关系中国中央集权嵌入性
Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 246 , June 2021 , pp. 545 - 564
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © SOAS University of London, 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. 2013. “Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on some major issues concerning comprehensively deepening the reform.” China.org.cn, http://www.china.org.cn/china/third_plenary_session/2014-01/16/content_31212602_9.htm.Google Scholar
deLisle, Jacques. 2017. “Law in the China model 2.0: legality, developmentalism and Leninism under Xi Jinping.” Journal of Contemporary China 26(103), 68–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fu, Diana. 2017. “Fragmented control: governing contentious labor organizations in China.” Governance 30(3), 445–462.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gong, Ting. 2004. “Dependent judiciary and unaccountable judges: judicial corruption in contemporary China.” The China Review 4(2), 33–54.Google Scholar
Granovetter, Mark. 1985. “Economic action and social structure: the problem of embeddedness.” American Journal of Sociology 91(3), 481–510.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
He, Fan. 2013. “Fayuan ren cai wu tongguan bingfei ‘chuizhi guanli’” (The judicial centralization reform is not “vertical management”). Fazhi zixun 11, 63.Google Scholar
He, Xin. 2014. “Maintaining stability by law: protest-supported housing demolition litigation and social change in China.” Law and Social Inquiry 39(4), 849–873.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hendley, Kathryn. 2009. “‘Telephone law’ and the ‘rule of law’: the Russian case.” Hague Journal on the Rule of Law 1(2), 241–262.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kostka, Genia, and Nahm, Jonas. 2017. “Central–local relations: recentralization and environmental governance in China.” The China Quarterly 231, 567–582.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Li, Ling. 2012. “The ‘production’ of corruption in China's courts: judicial politics and decision making in a one-party state.” Law and Social Inquiry 37(4), 848–877.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Li, Ling. 2016. “The Chinese Communist Party and people's courts: judicial dependence in China.” American Journal of Comparative Law 64, 37–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Li, Ling. 2019. “Politics of anticorruption in China: paradigm change of the Party's disciplinary regime 2012–2017.” Journal of Contemporary China 28, 47–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lieberthal, Kenneth, and Oksenberg, Michel. 1988. Policy Making in China: Leaders, Structures, and Processes. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liu, Sida. 2006. “Beyond global convergence: conflicts of legitimacy in a Chinese lower court.” Law and Social Inquiry 31(1), 75–106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Minzner, Carl. 2018. End of an Era: How China's Authoritarian Revival Is Undermining its Rise. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ng, Kwai Hang, and He, Xin. 2017. Embedded Courts: Judicial Decision-making in China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Polanyi, Karl. 2001. The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Qian, Yingyi, and Xu, Chenggang. 1993. “Why China's economic reforms differ: the m-form hierarchy and entry/expansion of the non-state sector” Economics of Transition 1(2), 135–170.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shambayati, Hootan. 2008. “Courts in semi-democratic/authoritarian regimes: the judicialization of Turkish (and Iranian) politics.” In Moustafa, Tamir and Ginsburg, Tom (eds.), Rule by Law: The Politics of Courts in Authoritarian Regimes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 283–303.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supreme People's Court of China. 2015. “Opinions of the Supreme People's Court on comprehensive deepening of reform of people's courts.” Chinacourt.org, https://www.chinacourt.org/law/detail/2015/02/id/148096.shtml.Google Scholar
Supreme People's Court of China. 2017. Judicial Reform of Chinese Courts: 2013–2016. Beijing: People's Court Press.Google Scholar
Tushnet, Mark. 2015. “Authoritarian constitutionalism.” Cornell Law Review 100(2), 391–461.Google Scholar
Wang, Yueduan. 2019. “Reevaluating ‘countermeasure from below’: evidences from judicial personnel reforms in China.” Peking University Law Journal 7(2), 127–145.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wang, Yueduan. 2020a. “Overcoming embeddedness: how China's judicial accountability reforms make its judges more autonomous.” Fordham International Law Journal 43, 737–766.Google Scholar
Wang, Yueduan. 2020b. “The more authoritarian, the more judicial independence? The paradox of court reforms in China and Russia.” University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law 22, 529–560.Google Scholar
Xie, Xiaojian. 2015. “Sheng yixia difang fayuan, jianchayuan ren cai wu tongyi guanli zhidu yanjiu” (Study on the centralization reforms on courts and procuratorates below the provincial level). Lilun yu gaige 01, 153–58.Google Scholar
Xiong, Yuemin, Meng, Jun and Zhang, Run. 2017. Shenzhen shi sifa zerenzhi gaige disan fang pinggu baogao (Shenzhen Judicial Accountability Reforms Third-party Evaluation Report). Beijing: China Law Society Publishing.Google Scholar
Zhang, Taisu, and Ginsburg, Tom. 2019. “China's turn toward law.” Virginia Journal of International Law 59(2), 306–389.Google Scholar
Zhou, Xueguang. 2017. The Institutional Logic of Governance in China: An Organizational Approach. Beijing: Joint Publishing.Google Scholar
Zhu, Suli. 2016. Sending Law to the Countryside: Research on China's Basic-level Judicial System. Singapore: Springer Singapore.CrossRefGoogle Scholar