Study On Collegiate Bench Development

Collegial panel of the court is the legal form to try various cases in our country. According to our Criminal Procedure Law, all cases should be heard by the collegial panel except for those cases that can be applied to summary procedure. The committee of the collegial panel, which can be made up of either juror and professional judges, or of only judges, must all participate in the whole procedures from hearing, appraising to refereeing of a case. The development of collegial panel is an important part to improve the state's construction of a legal system, which always has eye focus of insiders and even common people. Since the foundation of China until now (over 60 years), collegial panel has gone thought four stages: construction, destruction, reconstruction and further improvement and reform, achieved remarkable progresses. Collegial panel has long been generally working to solve social disputes, maintain social stability and keep the court's basic justice, while problems also has been exploding more obviously. At the end of 2009, two judicial interpretations are issued successively by supreme people's court (Some Provisions of supreme people's court on people's assessors participating in hearing activities and Some Provisions of supreme people's court on further strengthening the collegial panel's duties), which arouse attentions of academic field and practical field to the development of collegial panel. On that account, with the above two interpretations as starting points, the thesis discusses and study the construction of the state's collegial panel from the perspective of criminal procedure, which has certain theoretical and practical significances.Other than the preface, it consists of four parts. In preface, the research purpose, scope, theoretical and practical values are introduced. The body part is written according to the writing pattern as following: ask questions, analyze and solve problems, within which the proposition of collegial panel construction is discussed and studied.The first part is a summary of the collegial panel. The author firstly describes the meaning and features of collegial panel, explaining it is the legal and basic form to try the state's various cases. Then on this basis, there key valuable functions of the collegial panel are analyzed: firstly, the referee's minor premise--- identifies facts more objectively; secondly, the referee's major premise --- applies the law more accurately and reasonably; thirdly, restricts and protects jurisdictionThe history of collegial panel development process is introduced in the second part. The author divides it into four stages: construction, destruction, reconstruction and further reform and improvement, by which the history of collegial panel is briefly reviewed.The third part is introspection to the active collegial panel development. The author turns to the state's judicial practice by analyzing the current development of the collegial panel and then summarizing the major problems of the collegial panel system. The problems are as followings: the collegial panel has limited power; it combines in forms but separates in real; and the peer-reviewed process is simplified. These problems are analyzed deeply by the author and find out that the reasons for the above problems are various. Selecting the major reasons, the author mainly expounds the following reasons in details: the administrative tendency of the court system, low quality of judges (mainly refers to the judges from Primary Court), power imbalances among members in the collegial panel, the lack of peer-reviewed atmosphere, unreasonable accountability in misjudged cases.Basis on the third part, envisagement and suggestions for the further development of the collegial panel are proposed by analyzing the problems and considering the current situations of our county in the part four. The author believed that several tasks should be done for the further development of collegial panel. Firstly, the relationship between the collegial panel and relative subjects needs to deal with, including the relationship between collegial panel and the presiding judge, the relationship between president and higher courts as well as Judicial Committee. Secondly, the quality of judges should be improved, as a high-quality judge team is the prerequisite and basis to return rights to collegial panel, achieve judge independence and collegial panel independence. Thirdly, improve internal operation mechanism of collegial panel, including reform its constitute form, refine peer-reviewed rules, strengthen accountability and cancel accountability for misjudged cases.