Research On Criminal Judicial Trust:from The Perspective Of Social Cognition

China is pushing forward its "rule of law" and the courts of all level are facing more and more cases as well as the hope of litigants. Unfortunately, the courts have not gain a totally trust of the people. With the increase of confliction in nowadays China, it is crucial to find a way to enhance the judicial credibility. The core of judicial credibility is the public’s trust to the judicature. In our everyday life, it is easy to find that mass media uncovers criminal misjudged, which constantly eroding the public trust to the judicature. This paper is based on our judicial practice from law-sociology and psychology perspective. By using empirical analysis and comparative analysis, we discuss the reasons that lead to the weakeness of judicial credibility during the operation of judicial power, and make a proper exploration that enhance public’s trust to the judicature.This paper has more than four thousand words with four parts.The first part illustrates the meaning of criminal judicial credibility. Criminal judicial credibility embodied in the public trust to the criminal justice system. It is the trust to the legitimacy and rationality of the criminal justice system. When dispute rising, the public believe criminal judicial officers can efficiently and fairly deal with it, and accredited criminal justice process, accept the result. Criminal judicial credibility includes four aspects, that is, public trust to the criminal jurisdiction, to the specialized agencies of criminal justice, to criminal judicial officers, to the process and results. From the perspective of social cognition, the formation of public criminal judicial credibility is that, firstly, social impression is formed by criminal jurisdiction and its implementation process and results, and on this basis the social evaluation and social judgment are formed, and finally do attribution explaining. This process, includes the process of the first impression formation of criminal judicial credibility and the revision process of criminal judicial credibility.In the second part, empirical research method is used to try to find out the factors that can influence criminal judicial credibility from the perspective of social cognition. Before empirical research, factors are assumed, such as the degree of public education, job occupation, quality of judicial officers, criminal procedural factors such as litigation opportunities, transparency of criminal justice, criminal justice involvement, criminal entities factors such as convincing of criminal justice, impartiality of criminal justice. From the view of earlier research, the factors that can influence criminal judicial credibility are authority of criminal justice, litigation opportunities, certainty of criminal justice and the degree of public education. The results of current research by SPSS shows that litigation opportunities, transparency of criminal justice, criminal justice involvement and quality of judicial officers are main factors that influence the trust of the public.The third analysis the reasons of the weakness of criminal judicial system. Through statistical analysis of the questionnaires, the status of our criminal justice trust includes four aspects, i.e. the criminal jurisdiction, the specialized agencies of criminal justice, the criminal judicial officer, the process and the results. Causes that resulting in the weakening of criminal justice trust are failure of criminal procedure, information asymmetry and distortion during the operation of jurisdictions, radiation effects of criminal misjudged, alienation caused by criminal justice specialization, public’s lack of understanding of the limit of criminal justice, limitations’of public participation in criminal litigation, deviation from the traditional culture of the modern spirit of law.The fourth part is about the suggestions. From the formation process of criminal justice trust, information plays a crucial role. Therefore, it is very important to standardize and improve information dissemination and access mechanisms, update the public’s ideas. Specifically, we should pay attention to both internal and external aspects of the judicial system. On one hand, we should increase the publicity of the criminal litigation, and improve the people’s jury system, and build public response mechanisms, enhance the autonomy of judges, perfect criminal miscarriage relief mechanism and improve sanctions of the procedural illegality. On the other hand, we should regulate the relationship between the media and the judicial system, reducing information distortion, improving the quality of judicial system, fostering the public’s rational concept of litigation and reshaping social trust.