On The Relationship Between Justice And Public Opinion

In recent years, with the frequent impact of public opinion to judicature, the relationship between judicature and public opinion has become a hot spot, and whether public opinion can influence judicature has become a controversial issue. This thesis analyses the relationship of judicature and public opinion from the point of application of law, discusses the impact of public opinion to judicature and institutionalized channels that public opinion can enter into judicature.Part I primarily discusses the concept of public opinion, summarizing current research on the concept of public opinion, illustrates the definition of public opinion from the point of applying laws. In the judicial process, public opinion is the relatively unanimous idea, sensibility or estimation. It has spontaneity and oriented feature, certainty and uncertainty, as well as stability and rheology.Part II organizes the historical changes of relationship between public opinion and judicature from ancient China to nowadays, focusing on expression and acceptance of public opinion. In ancient China, the acquaintance society, the strategy of morality with its priority to penalty make adopting public opinion in jurisdiction became an important feature of Chinese legal culture. In Contemporary China, there is a direct, close contact between public opinion and judicature before the Reform and Opening Up, public opinion even could be a basis for judicial decision. After that, as the construction of legal system, public opinion and judicature gradually widen. However, it also can become close up with the policy adjustments of judicature. It is a controversy on whether judicature should adopt public opinion.Part III sets forth theoretical foundation of judicature and public opinion, through discussing some basic relationships, like democracy and rule of Law, supervision by public opinion and independence of judicature, mass logos and professional logos. Besides that, it elaborates the positive and negative impacts of public opinion to justice objectively. Specifically, the entrance of public opinion to judicature is useful to make up for the shortage of judicial formalism, monitoring the abuse of judicial power, improving the acceptability of judicial decision; but it also may lead to moralization of law, result in injustice, and the interference of other power to judicaturePart IV establishes some institutionalized channels which should based on protecting rule of law and ensuring impartial judicature as well as promoting the justice of judiciary. Therefore, public opinion can affect justice through those channels that can be further divided in acceptance mechanism, filtration mechanism and feedback mechanism.