On The Wisdom Of The Judge

The wisdom of the judge, because of the special status of the judges, has been overlooked .Which in recent years, slowly arouse people's attention. People are becoming awareing the important role and significance of the wisdom of the judge. The multiple roles of judges, the limitations of the legal system, the problems and the challenges the judicial process facing, on the one hand ,decide the need to use wisdom, on the other hand , also decide that to use the wisdom of the judges must be reasonable. That is under the premise of abiding by the law, using the knowledge and experience of judge reserves, using legal thinking, judging value properly, and accepting moral constraints and guidelines of Virtue Ethics ,to access legal justice.In fact, there are abundant study on the wisdom of judges early abroad , although they often didn't say clearly that the study is on the wisdom of judges. Their understanding the wisdom of the judges has gone through a long process. From the pursuit of a rare highest and most comprehensive wisdom in the ancient Greek, to the progress of pursuit of rational wisdom only and denying practical wisdom. Later, at the Holmes era, people began to attach importance to practical wisdom. However, in this era, someone put the practical wisdom to the extreme, and exaggerated the practical wisdom. Cardozo ,the American judge considers that judges should consider various factors, and becomed the model of using wisdom to pursuit of balance. There are many theories on the wisdom of the judges in western countries, they are: rules theory, principles theory, virtue theory, results theory, and democracy theory. Although these theories have their unique role and significance, but inevitably have more or less certain aspects of the limitations. The virtue theory and the democracy theory to the rule by law in contemporary China, will be very important to learn.In addition, the Chinese people have been attaching great importance to wisdom and pursuit of it since ancient times, especially the wisdom of noble officials. While our long decadent feudal society buried countless grievances of the dead, but there were no lack of cases which embodied fairness, justice and the fundamental values in feudal history. Among them, those trial stories about noble officials which shine the light of the wisdom through the official history, unofficial history and people's oral expression vividly spread down from generation to generation. Compared to the study on the wisdom of the judges in western countries, China's systematic and theoretical research on the wisdom of the judges is somehow poor.It is therefore necessary to analyze and summarize the trial stories of ancient noble officials. Because of the special nature of our ancient judges'trial cases, according to the wisdom of the different areas of knowledge base, the wisdom of the ancient judges can be grouped three categories: the wisdom using the legal knowledge, the wisdom using the social knowledge, the wisdom using the cultural knowledge.Although the legal system and legal norms of our contemporary society and ancient society are different, but China's traditional culture as a bridge links the ancient and contemporary. Therefore, China's experience in the analysis of our ancient society should be a matter of great inspiration and learn to our contemporary ideal of inquiry.In short, we should attach importance to study the wisdom of the judge, Because simply using the knowledge or experience or moral or courage , is too difficult to solve all the difficulties and problems inherent in the judicial process, unable to cope with the challenges that our rapid development of modern society poses, thus making it difficult to achieve the ultimate legal justice.Judges only legitimate use wisdom, can contribute to the building of a genuine rule by law society, will it be possible to achieve justice. The demand of the wisdom of the Judge put forward to the demands to the social reality. On the one hand, we must establish a truly independent judicial system, or the wisdom of the judges will not be able to play or will be metamorphosed. On the other hand, in order to training judges of wisdom, the education system must be innovatived, and to explore the educational methods which can help to enlighten students'wisdom.