Research On The Judicial Openness System In The Internet Age

With the continuous progress of the ruling strategy "Rule by Law", our country has formed the socialist legal system with Chinese characteristics. The process of judicial reformation has a big advancement both in the breadth and depth. The judicial openness system is an important part of the construction of a socialist country of democracy and construction of a socialist country under the rule of law. Further improving the judicial openness system, intensifying the depth of the judicial openness, establishing the judicial democracy are still the key points of judicial reformation in the new era. Under the continuing efforts of the multilateral forces, the judicial openness system has made considerable developments in case filing, court trials, enforcements, hearings and documents, but the construction of the system of judicial openness is unfortunately in the primary stage. The judicial openness system is not only lack of a systematic institutional guarantee, but also can’t adapt to the changing society. In nowadays, with the rapid spread of the Internet, people obtain a new way to supervise the behavior of our government-----watching them through the Internet which leads to a new form of democracy. The Internet provides a new carrier for all kinds of judicial information, opening up a brand new approach for the masses of people involved in the judicial process. This new approach provides both opportunities and challenges for the method and result of the judicial openness system. To figure out how to capture the opportunities and overcome the challenges is very important for the future development of the judicial openness system, but the related research is almost blank, especially about the real case study. In this paper, the main focus is to study how the judicial openness system work and what problems it face. In order to obtain this goal, the paper is closely combined with the specific reality of the judicial openness system working in our country. All the data in this paper is come from the official websites of the33intermediate people’s courts all around the country. The33intermediate people’s courts are picked from<Notice of the Supreme People’s Court on Issuing the Decision on the Selection of Judicial Openness Exemplary Courts>(No.383[2010] of the Supreme People’s Court).In this paper, the author makes an integrated use of institutional analysis, empirical analysis, comparative analysis and historical analysis to research the data, and summarize the status of the judicial openness system. At the same time, through the data, the author also finds a lot of problems about the judicial openness system in the practical level. Since the disclosure of government information system has many successful experiences, at the end of the paper, the author puts forward some reasonable suggestions to make the judicial openness system work better. This paper has five parts besides the introduction and the conclusion.The first part reviews the development history of the judicial openness system. In the beginning, the judicial openness system was considered as a lawsuit system which reflected democracy, but now it is regarded as one of an important human rights. The first part also explains the content of the judicial openness system based on<The Six Provisions on Judicial Openness>(No.58[2009] of the Supreme People’s Court).In the second part,the author formulates a series of indicators to exam the status quo of the judicial openness system among the33intermediate people’s courts, which picked from<Notice of the Supreme People’s Court on Issuing the Decision on the Selection of Judicial Openness Exemplary Courts>(No.383[2010] of the Supreme People’s Court).The indicators are based on two judicial interpretation issued by the Supreme People’s Court in2009and2010----<The Six Provisions on Judicial Openness>(No.58[2009] of the Supreme People’s Court) and<Criterions on Model Courts for Judicial Openness>.The result comes from a comprehensive study of the official website of the33intermediate people’s courts. From the result we can sum up the following conclusions:Implementation of the judicial openness system is attaches great importance to all the examed intermediate people’s courts; The online services function has been gradually established among most of the33intermediate people’s courts; But the overall construction level of the court’s official website is still not high; The development degree of the judicial openness system in different regionals is imbalanced; People is very hard to get the trial management work and other management activities related to the trial work of the people’s courts through the court’s official website; The negotiation nature of the judicial openness system needs to be improved.The third part introduces the theoretical basis for the judicial openness system in three aspects. This theoretical basis contains of the right to know theory, the information asymmetry theory and the democratic theory. The fourth parts focuses on the value and function of the judicial openness system. The above two parts suggest the necessity and the urgency to perfect the judicial openness system.The fifth part pays attention to put forward measures and suggestions to solve the problems mentioned in the second part. These measures and suggestions are come from using successful experience of the disclosure of government information system for reference. The main idea is to perfect the judicial openness system on the institutional level. The authority must keep improving legislation in order to increase the maneuverability of the system. At the same time, we should learn from the successful experience of the disclosure of government information on the website by building up performance evaluation, so that we can improve the courts’ juridical openness work. In the end, we should also do a good job on balancing the rights involved. Not only meet the public’s right to know, but also protect the right of privacy. Not only protect the independence of the judiciary but also safeguard the freedom of the press.