On The Reform And Perfection For The Assessor System In China

The assessor system refers to such a kind of judicial system that the court legally brings the general public and non-professional judges in on the trial of a civil, administrative and criminal case. In the modern law-governing society, the assessor system serving as the system of protecting the democratic form and right of a citizen and the public's direct participation in judicial activities, is highly appreciated and favored in numerous countries. Carrying out the people's assessor system is a vital content in the judicial reform in China, which fulfills greatly important functions of improving judicial democracy, safeguarding judicial justice, and promoting judicial authority. After the National Peoples Congress'Decision of Perfecting the People's Assessors System and other relevant laws are issued, the people's assessor system in China starts to own legal bases, and has sufficiently shown its reasonability and superiority during the process of implementation. However, this system still needs to be further improved in practice, and its functions need to be sufficiently performed as well. This thesis mainly illustrates the following aspects: the first chapter discusses the theoretical basis and value functions of the assessor system, the second chapter compares the assessor system in the two major law systems, the third chapter analyzes the historical evolvement, present situation and existent issues of the assessor system in China, the fourth chapter proposes several designs and suggestions on the reform and perfection of the people's assessor system in China.The first chapter the general illustration of the assessor system is divided into two sections. The first section introduces the theoretical basis of the assessor system, presents the legal meaning and historical origin from a theoretical view, interprets the definition and connotation of the assessor system from the perspective of word sense and jurisprudence, and meanwhile analyzes the characteristics of the assessor system; the second section mainly analyzes the value functions of the assessor system from the perspective of jurisprudence, and in general, its value functions mainly comprises the following aspects: the assessor system is helpful to persevere the judicial justice, to show the judicial democracy, to limit and balance the authority, to ensure the judicial integrity, and to strengthen education of popularizing the knowledge on laws.The second chapter briefly analyzes on the characteristics and differences of the assessor system in the two major law systems. The first section introduces the establishment and characteristics of the assessor system in the Anglo-American law system. It mainly illustrates that in the assessor system, the jury is composed of ordinary citizens, the jurors do not have any favorable opinions to the case before the court trial, the jury looks on calmly all the time during the process of action, and the juror exercises the right of judgment on his or her own, etc. The second section introduces the establishment and characteristics of the lay assessor system in the civil law system. It mainly discusses in the lay assessor system, the assessor system usually does not apply to civil cases, and instead only applies to serious criminal cases, jurors participate in the trial and judgment on their own name, and there is no unified jury and no clear-cut functions between judges and jurors, who compose a collegial panel and assess a case together. Jurors have the authority of holding the trial activity in the court together with professional judges, and resolving the issue of confirming facts and applying laws, own the same right to vote as professional judges, finally the final judgment and decree are determined according to the majority principle, and judges'control and influence on the case is relatively great, etc. The third section compares the similarities and differences of the two major law systems, and through comparative analysis, propose conception of the system design and the selection of reform modes of the people's assessor system in China.The third chapter analyzes the historical development and present situation of the assessor system in China. The first section analyzes the historical development of the assessor system in China, the assessor system in modern Chinese history is established after the Revolution of 1911, but then is not put into practice under the dominion of the Nationalist Party, and since the People's Republic of China was established in 1949, the people's assessor system in China has experienced the stage of preliminary affirmation and the stage of recovery and fading. The second section analyzes the present situation of the execution of the assessor system in China from the perspective of practice, the author, through the statistical research on the personnel structure and system execution of 203 jurors from seven local courts in Yangzhou City of Jiangsu Province, analyzes the present situation, problems and reasons of the execution of the people's assessor system in China. It is mainly represented in the following aspects: firstly, there is no sufficient affirmation of the functions and value of the people's assessor system, the people's assessors have not sufficiently realize their own value, it has not been completely implemented for the parties involved in proceeding to own the right of applying for the participation of jurors in the trial; secondly, the problems of electing the people's assessors include the problem of the general election of the people's assessors and the problem of electing the people's assessors for a particular case; thirdly, the phenomenon of presence without trial still exists, and influences the fulfillment of the assessor function, its reasons are various, and mainly lies in that due to the unimportant position and insufficient legal knowledge of the people's assessors, the people's assessors in China do not own a so vital political status as those in western countries; fourthly, the management of the people's assessors is not sufficiently perfect. Because the system of supervising the people's assessors has not been established, courts lack the system of punishing the people's assessors, which is not conducive to realize judicial justice.The fourth chapter discusses how to reform and perfect the assessor system in China, and this chapter is divided into three sections. The first section analyzes the feasibility of perfecting the assessor system in China, and the second section concerns the specific conception of perfecting the assessor system in China. To be specific, the following aspects are mainly considered: firstly, the contradiction between the assessor system and the professional development of judges needs coordinating, and the ordinary people's assessors and the professional people's assessors should be brought in, which, on one hand, ensures the comprehensiveness of the source of the people's assessors to the maximum extent, in order to realize judicial democracy, and on the other hand, compensates for judges'lack of other profession knowledge caused by the professional development, in order to ensure judicial justice to the maximum extent; secondly, the mode of participating in a trial should be actively and effectively investigated in the way of normalizing the mode of organizing the collegial panel, expanding the type of cases tried by the participation of the people's assessors and clarifying the rights and obligations of the people's assessors; thirdly, the system of supervising and punishing the people's assessors should be established, in order to ensure that the people's assessors can properly exercise their authority and automatically accept supervision. The third section proposes some suggestions on perfecting the relevant systems and conditions. It should be conducted in various ways to extensively propagandize the work of the people's assessors, indeed promote the social status of the people's assessors, in order to comprehensively improve the work of the people's assessors.