Preliminary Analysis Of The Structure Of Criminal Proceedings

Structure of criminal proceedings is one of the basic conceptions in the theory of Criminal proceedings. It consists of two parts, horizontal structure and vertical structure. The horizontal structure refers to legal status of prosecutor, defendant and judge in different stages of criminal proceedings and their relationships. The vertical structure refers to legal status of policeman, prosecutor and judge in the whole criminal proceedings and their relationships. Conception of structure of criminal proceedings was introduced to China by Doctor Li in the 90th, and then became popular in academic community. Many scholars started to analyze criminal proceedings in China and other countries with the conception, and assumed the modification of China's criminal proceedings on that basis. Some of their views was adopted in later legislation and judicature, and promoted the development of China's criminal proceedings. This article begins with the conception of structure of criminal proceedings, and its two restricting factors:evolution of criminal proceeding system and objective of criminal proceedings. In partⅡand partⅢ, the author analyzes the two restricting factors and reveals their natures and rules behind them. After that, the article focuses on the horizontal structure and vertical structure by examining distinct control over result and over procedure possessed by different participants of criminal proceedings in America and Germany. And a conclusion is drawn that countries ruled by law share similar structures, however, there are always some differences. Then the article discusses how a country's evolution of criminal proceeding system and objective of criminal proceedings affect its.structure of criminal proceedings. In the latter part of the article, the author turns to China and points out that China should learn from modern inquisitorial system on the basis of the analysis of China's history of criminal proceeding and its objective of criminal proceedings right now. Moreover, through comparison between structure of China and those of other countries, especially of Germany, the author finds the problem in Chinese system and its root cause, and put forward corresponding proposals...