Study Of Citizens' Participation In Judicial Activities In China

Citizens'participation in judicial activities means that ordinary citizens associating with specific legal practices actively get involved in judicial trials, supervision and regulation, and processing, so that the legal incidents are relatively fairly resolved. It's one of the basic features of the modern democratic states that the judicial activities are directly or indirectly dominated by the public. The nature of citizens'participation in judicial activities is to protect the democracy and justice. Citizens'participation in judicial activities can not only extend people's sovereignty, but also achieve their democratic rights to manage the country and resolve social disputes. Besides, it also can exert huge impact on implementing checks and balances on the judicial power. It's really an effective mechanism for the judiciary to improve the ability to resist external interference and administrate justice independently according to the law.Based on historical traditions and the principles of democracy, western countries have widely established the civil justice system, the jury system, participation in the trial system and other relatively perfect citizen participation systems to meet their justice development needs. At the early stage when new China was established, our country provided contents about citizens'participation in the justice administration in the judicial system. After half-century's development of justice theory and practice, we've also established and improved a set of systematic ways for citizens to participate in judicial activities to meet the needs of the development of democracy and rule of law in our country. The two most typical cases are the Jury System via which citizens can get directly involved in the administration of justice and the Public Trial System via which citizens can- monitor judicial activities. With the rapid development of modern information technology, it's been phenomenal for citizens to participate in judicial activities via mass communication media and also it has exerted huge impact on judicial practice in China. Above-mentioned participation methods have both advantages and disadvantages. Like the Jury System, we've seen the trends of elitist phenomenon and presenting without trial during the operation. During the operation of the Public Trial System, we've seen non-strict implementation, inaccurate judgment and know-how, and the mere pursuit of formality. The participation of the public mass media, especially the internet, showed huge passion in participating judicial cases and judicial projects but meanwhile generated a series of problems like being non-rational, non-standard, disordered.China is a post-developmental state. After the founding of New China and especially since the reform and opening up, we've made considerable progress in democracy and political civilization construction with the rule of law as the core and put forward the goal of building a socialist country ruled by law. Take the Jury System for example. The Jury System is a systematic way which was established first and developed quite well and it has played very important role in judicial activities. Nevertheless, the discussion of abolition of this system has never stopped. Behind the abolition debates, it reflects the difficult situation of the development of citizens' participation in justice administration in our country and refract the contradictory tangle point that whether it's needed for citizens to participate in judicial activity. We come to the problem whether we should take judicial specialization or judicial democratization during the construction of the judicial system. The judicial activities of course are of professional and independent features, and we must be quite cautious to introduce the democracy as a method of work in the field of justice. China's state system and the People's Justice itself contain the content of judicial democracy. Socialist democracy is established on the basis of the class nature of the democracy of people's nature of the justice.As China now is in stage of change and transition, it's important to affirm the positive effect of judicial democracy in value level and meanwhile to prevent democratic means from the interference with judicial independence and resolve properly the relations of judicial independence and judicial democracy. Only via this way, we can contribute to the democracy and rule of law in China. So we have to draw clear lines and set clear limits between judicial democracy and judicial independence, which is to insist on the people, political and social nature of justice and prevent justice from being popular, politicization, and public opinion. Based on clarifying the lines and limits, we should further specify the forms and behaviors of citizens'participation in judicial activities, build response network platform for the judiciary, continuously develop and broaden participation ways and regulator forms, direct and protect orderly participation, foster healthy interaction between the judiciary and the public, and finally pave a way of justice civilization construction with Chinese socialist characteristics and the specialization and democratization of judicial justice.