The Establishment Of The Case Directing System In China

As the construction of China's legal system goes on, the great progress has been made in legislation. Now, People have laws to follow while dealing with certain affairs in either political, economic or social lives, and a socialism legal system with Chinese characteristic has taken shape on the whole. So the construction of our country's rule of law switches the focus of the work from the legislation field to the justice field.The supreme court has promulgated two judicial administration orders, namely the First Five-year Plan for Reform of People's Court and the Second Five-year Plan for Reform of People's Court (2004-2008), addressing the problems in judicial institutions in hope of promoting the judicial reform in an all-around way. The 13^th of the 50 reform tasks listed in the second five-year plan is " to constitute and perfect the case directing system, so as to bring into full play the roles of cases in unifying the criteria for the adoption of law, directing the trial work of inferior courts, richening the theories of law science, etc. The supreme court should promulgate orders about the Case Directing System, prescribing the criteria and the procedure of case select, the way of cases release, and the principles of case guidance. " It was the first time the case directing system be officially addressed, which indicated the establishment of the case directing system as a judicial institution.This article systematically introduces the origin of the case directing system, the significance in both the terms of theory and practice, the historical and practical performance of the system as well as detailed suggestions on how to construct the system in our country, which will lead to a understanding of the nature of the system and a full play of its role in real judicial practices.The direction implied in the released directing cases are not so optional as showed literally in its name and may bind in specific cases as how judicial interpretations do, which actually borrows some elements from case law system and poses as a case directing system with Chinese characteristics while showing some resemblance with case law system.The case directing system will make up the disadvantages of law due to its abstract, vague and hysteretic natures, and will greatly do help the safeguard of independence of justice, the guarantee of equity justice in cases, saving judicial resources, the improve of professional capacity and the reinforcement of the awareness of law.The establishment of a case directing system in our country follows the trend of the unification of two law systems due to globalization. The system has its references from both the traditional case systems in history and the experience gained in local court practices. In order to constitute and perfect the case directing system, it is necessary to standardize the creation and the use of directing cases, to regulate the select criteria and subject, to make sure how to choose, editor, release, apply, and supervise the directive cases. It is not until we finish all these work that the case directing system will come to play its role in the process of the construction of the rule of law over both the country and the society.