A Research On Marxist Doctrines About Justice

Marxist jurisprudence is an organic component of Marxist theory. It emphasizes rights of citizens, liberty safeguarding and emancipation of human being. Its doctrines about justice involve not only the basic theoretical problems such as the orientation and significance of justice, but also the construction of the material system such as judicial independence, court system and judicial democracy.According to Marxists, judicature is not only a tool for class struggle, but playing an important role in social management. Because jurisdiction is faced with the public and bears the burden to maintain the common order of the society, the revolutionary tutors look on it as a type of social power. The social disputes that are solved by judicature are special ones. Judicature takes the responsibilities to settle the social disputes in legal processes and develop the law while apply it, so is in socialist nations. Socialist system is a new one, in which the courts have to take an even widened social responsibility. Law no longer means cruel penalties and compulsions in it, but a measure, on the basis of humanitarianism and together with the censure from the public, with the purpose to eliminate penalties finally, to ensure citizens to act on inner self-discipline and external compulsion. Meanwhile, Marxists regard the restraint of jurisdiction to the other powers as a necessary term of constitutionalism. by which judicature is a vital step to the state of rule of law, of which the nucleus is that the law is effectively applied and observed. In Marxists' literatures, courts and judges are considered the basic carriers to reach the state of rule of law while the restraint of jurisdiction to legislative and administrative power is emphasized. They are trying to safeguard the people's liberty and rights from being trespassed through a construction of constitutionalism involving separation and mutual restraint of powers and rationally, orderly operated state powers.'Justice' is a basic virtue of a good society and also the start of Marxist jurisprudence. In Marxists' viewpoint, justice, which focus on equality and is closely related with the material conditions, indicates the just relationship among citizens. The revolutionary tutors define 'substantial justice' as the basic precondition of justice, which is subject to the justness of the law itself because judicature exists for the enforcement of the law. Thus, the establishment of a justice mechanism requires chiefly a just law, which is hoped to be a real 'bible for people's liberty'. Marx hoped that the legislators could respect people's rights, rather than restrict them; that legislators could take the abilities of the citizens to realize the rights into account when they are trying to confirm them, which means that-the rights confirmed should be available and accessable, otherwise the confirmation itself is a deceit and that the legislators should take the great spirit of humanitarianism into their hearts and fully consider the possibilities of citizens' offences by force of the environment to make the justness of the law tightly connected with the real living conditions. Meanwhile, the equal protection by lawitself doesn't mean the equally delivered opportunities only, but involves the abilities of the citizens to realize them. Legal equality should not only be emphasized superficially but substantially. If the law itself is made to stick up to the benefits of a certain class or group, the more selfless verdict will show more obvious selfishness.Justice could be divided into 'substantial justice' and 'procedural justice*. The revolutionary tutors hold that to pursue substantial justice we have to find out the case facts firstly. Case facts are the facts supposed in law, without which, citizens won't and needn't go to court; However, once a behavior has get into the field covered with law, it should be evaluated by the court established by the state according to the laws made by the state's legislators. According to what mentioned above, Marxists defined the case facts as the decided legal facts with full evidences. The realization of the idea requires an open controversy, in the process of which the facts will be find out by cross-examination and questioning; and that the judge should be far away from the strongest first impression. Secondly, the trial should be performed legally and comply with the judicial guide line of 'base on fact and take law as the criterion'. The law, with the essence of rationality and the significance of liberty, should be universal and explicit formally. As the criterion of judgment, the law should include not only the statutes made by legislators, but natural law, customs, legal principles, policies and legal awareness, which all together provide the judges with widened spaces for judicial discretion. A legal trial consists of the basic aspects of preserving the authority of law, understanding the law correctly and interpreting the law accurately. Finally, the principle of 'Public Penalty' should be taken into substantive justice, which intends to ensure the safety of the citizens by preventing the other social organizations and individuals apart from the state from executing the power of penalty which belongs only to die state. The subordinate principles such as equality before the law, a prescribed punishment for a specified crime and punishmentfits the crime derive from the principle of 'Public Penalty' then.The other aspect of judicial justice is procedural justness. Marxists hold that procedural justice is a basic condition of substantive justice, which makes procedural justice an important part of judicial justice. What's more, procedural justice is a sign of constitutionalism > and it is also be considered as a fence to keep arbitrary behaviors away. Substantive justice will be only a dream without procedural justice. Procedural justice involves judicial equality on one side, which requires the judicial organs to protect the litigant rights equally, offer the parties the same litigant conditions and base the judgments only on facts and law. That means any 'reasonable consideration' should not be excluded. On the other side, litigant condition should be equally protected, which, according to Marxists, includes mainly that the judge should ensure the 'weapons' of each party are equal, that the information should be exchanged among the parties equally, which ensure the equal, impersonal, and reliable basis are established for each party when they are performing their litigant rights, and that the checkup of the evidences should be impartially to all the parties. The results of justice consist of executing the law seriously, punishing all the offenders, and adjudging accurately. Notice thatserious execution of the law does not deprive of the judicial discretion, because the judges are not executive machines, but motile legal professionals who could, with their wisdom and creativity, fill the loopholes of the law and rectify the wrongness of the law.Justice is not a Utopian dream of the law, and it could be realized by the construction of system, in which judicial independence is stressed by the revolutionary tutors, who look on it as the base of the system, and analyze the origin, the basis, the contents, and the significance of it generally in their literatures. They hold that judicial independence results from 'the dread of themselves by human', that it is a system to prevent the appearance of centralization of state power, that based on jurisdictional nature of 'of the people', jurisdiction should take relevant social responsibilities, and - mat 'a free country' is a necessary condition of the continuous existence of judicial independence. Judicial independence is impossible in an arbitrary country. The contents of judicial independence consist of the independence of the court, the independence of the jury, and the independence of the judges, by which the court, the jury, and the judge are correspondingly independent no matter in political system or professional relationships, by which the subjective basis of judicial independence will then be established. Judicial independence is not the purpose itself, and it exists with the purpose of 'free judgment', which means that the judge could judge by himself in a certain trial, only if he has complied with the law and the professional ethics.Besides the construction of judicial independence to keep the external interferences such as political and social ones away, the followings are also included in Marxist judicial system: that jurisdiction belongs only to judicial organs; that jurisdiction cares about the lawsuits brought out by the parties merely and give the answers as 'right' or 'wrong'; that jurisdiction could be performed only by the courts on behalf of the state, rather than any others; that the courts can only give verdicts on legal problems, but not any political ones; that in order to ensure the exclusivity of jurisdiction, the setup of special courts should be prohibited. As far as the system of court is concerned, the Marxists hold that the courts should be set up legally and independently according to the principle of democracy and that the courts should take justice as its final pursuit.Since the law is to be executed by the judges, system of judges is certainly an important component of Marxist jurisprudential theory. The revolutionary tutors regard the judges as members of national political system as well as legal professionals to perform social responsibilities. About the causes of the appearance of judges, they think it is a combine result of separation of classes, the division of social work and the operation of law itself. And about qualifications, they take professional factors and ethics as important aspects, while about the selection of judges, advocate democratic voting. When the judges' responsibilities are mentioned, they hold: firstly, the judges should abide by the law rather than put it aside when they are perform the jurisdiction; secondly, the judges should development the law, and interpret and apply the law creatively when there are legal leaks; finally, the judges should preserve the liberty, and take the people's benefit as the top criteria of judicature.Judicature is social and the courts belong to the people, thus, the Marxists regard judicial democracy as a basic principle of judicial system. Firstly, they advocate the construction of open trial. They think that the trial should be opened to the people and press, that the related material should be opened during the trial, and so are the judge's judgments. By the construction of the open trial, the significance of the cases will be revealed to the public and the settlement of social problem will finally be reached. The people will get legal education from the process and their legal awareness will be improved. Secondly, they insist that the jury system should be set up. According to Marxists, jury is a way for the citizens to take part in the judicial process, and it is the most elementary systematic construction to ensure the judicial democratization, which could ensure the realization of justice by taking advantage of the experience of the jury in cognizing the facts, and restrict the jurisdiction by passing the right of dispute settlement over to the people. Certainly, all above should be based on that all the jurors are selected impartially and rightly. Thirdly, they argued that the supervision of the people and press on judicature should be empowered to ensure the realization of judicial socialization.