Research On The Judge’s Professional Thinking

The standard and professional process of judge has been a significant part during judicial reform in China.The most notable feature of judges,a well-known profession,is the unique professional thinking.Systematic research on domestic judge’s professional thinking is realistic necessity,theoretical innovation and practical guidance.The goal of the paper is to study judge’s thinking in the context of judicial status in China.By referring to domestic and foreign academic achievements of judge’s professional thinking,especially corresponding domestic study,judge’s professional thinking is concluded from three aspects,which are pure theoretical research,department law and the skill,training,thought and experience of judges.A reflection of domestic research shows that there are following shortcomings:systematic research to be improved,disconnection between theory and practice research,insufficient focus on practice,and so on.Those shortcomings are researched in the paper.As fundamental work of judge’s professional thinking research,the definition of judge’s professional thinking was compared between Chinese jurists and judges.A jurist’s definition tends to be theoretical as it should be.A judge’s definition emphasizes dynamic operation of judge’s professional thinking during judicial decision,therefore it’s a recognition in real state.The judge’s professional thinking in this paper means whole process during judge resolving legal dispute in real case,which is a system of comprehensive application of a series of legal methods,and a professional thinking in real judicial system.First,judge’s professional thinking is legal thinking,and contains common features of legal thinking,like regularity,procedural,certainty,universality,etc.Second,it’s a professional thinking,which contains personality different from normal legal thinking,like neutrality,conservative,balance,practice rationality,etc.Judge’s professional thinking differs from prosecutor’s thinking,attorney’s thinking or jurist’s thinking in judicial practice,by comparing differences between them,the characteristics of domestic judge’s professional thinking was fully revealed.Judge’s professional thinking is a mental activity aiming at rule of law.This paper emphasizes the rule of law as "the rule of lawyers",which emphasizes the significance of lawyers to the rule of law and emphasizes the effect of lawyers during dynamic processes in the rule of law.In present China,legal thinking is a kind of governance thinking,a kind of law-based governance thinking.It is a different form of thinking comparing with juristic thinking.Considering demand,requirement and Chinese characteristics of domestic judge’s profession,domestic judge’s professional thinking has not only common features of judge’s profession,but also features with Chinese characteristics.It is not only juristic thinking but also legal thinking.Legal thinking reflects the meaning of the times in the professional thinking of domestic judges.Domestic judge’s thinking could be classified as thinking according to law and thinking about law.Thinking according to law basically means a judge must conduct professional thinking within legal procedures according to law,and the thinking should be logical.A domestic judge should pay a lot of attention to analog thinking due to its special function in case guidance system.Furthermore,a judge should think about law,which means judge’s professional thinking should consider reason and public opinion.Political factor should be taken into account for complex cases.As a counterpart of adjudication,mediation is a statutory solution to dispute,therefore mediation thinking is taken extra attention in judge’s professional thinking.Compared with static analysis of domestic judge’s professional thinking,how judge’s professional thinking actually operates in Chinese context should be pay more attention to.By means of survey,interview,statistics,etc.,this paper researched status of domestic judge’s professional thinking amongst judge-group during judicial practice.Besides,by reading books and articles composed by judges,and concluding judges’ experience and feelings during practice,further investigations were conducted for status of domestic judge’s professional thinking.In general,domestic judge-group appears to be lack of self-cognition.The reasons of that problem are the lack of foundation for a clear cognition of judges and insufficient motivation for judges to know themselves initiatively.Given quantity,type and trial-level of case factors make a significant impact on operation of judge’s professional thinking,an investigation was conducted on dynamic operation of domestic judge’s thinking,which revealed judge’s professional thinking within domestic judicial reality.For the time being,as artificial intelligence and big data being applied in legal practice on a huge scale,a profound change of traditional judge’s professional thinking will take place.Artificial intelligence could affect judge’s professional thinking both optimistic and pessimistic.The optimistic aspect enriches the connotation of judge’s professional thinking research,improves the judge’s logical thinking,extends the application of judge’s analogy thinking.The pessimistic aspect weakens judge’s professional rational thinking,deepens prejudice of judge’s professional thinking,strengthens rigidity of judge’s thinking and undermines independency of judge’s thinking.After study on static model and dynamic operation of domestic judge’s professional thinking,the final part concludes problems of domestic judge’s professional thinking:insufficient awareness and ability of legal thinking and methods,the erosion of moral and political thinking on judges’ professional thinking,the impact of public opinion on legitimacy thinking,rigid thinking understanding and application of law,adherence to mediation thinking.The origins of these problems are influence of the way of domestic traditional legal thinking,judge’s professional thinking shaped by current judicial system,restriction of judicial operating environment on judge’s professional thinking,limitation of legal method and law cultivation of judges.Solutions to improve domestic judge’s professional thinking were proposed:to strengthen training for judge’s legal thinking and method literacy,to take the priority of judge’s legitimacy thinking and procedural thinking in profession seriously,to strengthen system guarantee of judge’s career,to reinforce assist mechanism of artificial intelligence.