Research On Relation Between Criminal Justice And Public Opinion

In theory, the judicatory and the public opinion shall coincide with each othersmoothly, and the law shall reflect the public opinion. However, in practice, the lawalways runs away from the public opinion. The public opinion in the judicatoryprocedure plays an active character and affects the independence of the judicatory andalso shakes the judicatory’s authority for its characteristics. In history, we put aspecial importance on the public opinion in the judicatory procedure, especially incriminal cases with huge social influence. This decides that the justice shall notabandon the public opinion. We shall build up a modern judicatory opinion, based theidea of justice and democracy, seek a harmonious model between public opinion andthe criminal judicatory, and form a mutual relationship between those. With these, ademocratic and scientific criminal judicatory procedure will be built up, the justice ofthe judicatory will be enhanced, the public confidence in the judicatory will be liftedand the new requests and expectations will be satisfied continuously.This paper has30,000characters, which can be divided into four parts, exceptthe foreword and the epilogue, as follows:The foreword of this paper mainly focuses on the background of the relationshipso between and its importance. In this relationship, the criminal cases as related withthe basic problem of justice will made great effects in social. So these cases may moreeasily catch people’s eyes. Nowadays, in respect with this relationship, the scholarshave mainly focused on the introduction of foreign rules, and paid less attention onour problems; more focused on the theory, and paid less attention on the substantialrules. By pointing out the shortages in this relationship, researching the reasonsbehind, and then putting forward the needs of enhancing of this relation and buildingup a Chinese-characterized relationship, we arrive at the focus of this paper.The first part of this paper researches benefits for communication with the publicin the judicatory procedure of criminal cases. The public opinion which emphasizes particularly on the moral and is irrational sometimes stands for the democracy. In thejudicatory procedure of criminal cases, the public opinion comes out by differentmeans. The allowance of public opinion is necessary for the public supervision andthe protection of free speech and will enhance the justice of criminal judicatory, buildup the authority of the judicatory and improve the quality of courts’ decisions. Thepublic opinion has its rationality in judicatory procedure of criminal cases which shallbe affirmed sufficiently.The second part of this paper analyses the condition and its potential problemsabout the interaction between. After the case-oriented study of "Yao Jiaxin" and "LiChangkui", this part points out the public request for the justice has been lifted andthe participation of the public in the judicatory procedure has been more common, andhas wider scope and more means to express their opinions, such as Internet, which hasbecame an important channel to present their opinions. However, problems still existsin different ways under this background. The authority has not direct the publicopinion to a right way, while the unneutral pretrial news reports are widely publishedby media. On one hand, the authority lacks of specific understanding of publicopinions during the trial. On the other hand, the public opinions will make influenceon the judicial independence. The authority does not express itself after trials whichmakes the public doubt the judicial authority always.The third part of this thesis would explore reasons for the inharmonious relationbetween China’s criminal justice and public opinion. Judges always ignore publicpursuit of moral justice and get used to acting rigidly during the judicial process.Based on their own interests, the media are willing to provide the public with biasednews as a result of lack of self-regulation and supervision by authorities. The analysisprocedure of public opinions is not perfect, so that the public opinions are not limited.There is no judicial community and the existing sense of judicial authority has beenreduced recently. All above-mentioned factors contribute to the intense interactionbetween criminal justice and public opinion.The fourth part would propose the strategies for the construction of a harmoniousrelationship between the criminal justice and public opinion. Historical reasons, as well as current policies, would support this process. This part would emphasis theinsisting on judicial independence, the maintaining the essential legal administrationand the pursuit of the judicial justice, which could be the principles to guide theinteraction process at present. In this process, this part would address to strengthen theconstruction of the effective public opinion analysis mechanism, as well as thecooperation mechanism of the judicial authority and the media, network and judicialcommunity construction, and the realize of a harmonious interaction of criminaljustice and public opinion.