On The Improvement Of The System Of People’s Assessors In China

The Jury System is a litigation system in which the national judicial apparatusallows ordinary citizens to hear and judge the cases together with the judges. The JurySystem is not only a significant judiciary, but also a necessary presentation ofdemocratic politics. It has played as a vital role to safeguard judicial justice, toprevent corruption in the judiciary and to promote the protection of human rights.Currently, the Jury System is differently presented in the two families of law. One isthe Jury in the common law, the other is the Assessors in the civil law.During the period of political reform in late Qing dynasty, the draft of Criminaland Civil Procedure Law drew up by Shen Jiaben and Wu Tingfang was the firstdocument to introduce jury system into China. Although ultimately the draft was notput into effect because the feudal influence severely went against it, the spirit ofseparation of powers and democracy had generated a subtle influence on subsequentlegislation. Up to now, almost ten decades over, the system of people’s assessors hasexperienced ups and downs. Primarily developed in1950s, abolished in the “CulturalRevolution” and finally adopted in the Decision of the Standing Committee of theNational People’s Congress Regarding Perfecting the System of People’s Assessors in2004, the system of people’s assessors has experienced a lot and now, it has entered anew period of development.It is ten years from2014till now. The operation of the system of people’sassessors has made a great progress during this decade. However, due to thesloppiness of legislation and lack of matching policies, the system is still not as goodas expected. Thus, it is very necessary to take a review as well as a summary to theoperation of the particular system in this decade. What’s more, some rationalproposals on perfecting the system are desperately required also.The premises of making rational suggestions are to further understand thesystem and to make a worldwide study and contrast of jury system. With thedevelopment of jury systems, many kinds of new forms of jury system have come into legal practice. For instance, the jury system in common law, the assessor systemin civil law, the system of people’s assessors in Chinese mainland and the system ofreferees in Japan, etc. They mainly differ in three aspects, which are the applicationrange, the selection of jurors and the trial rules.When we reflect on ourselves, the problem existed are mainly as follows: firstly,our system of people’s assessors is in lack of constitutional basis and specialregulations which offer matching policies; secondly, the conditions of selectingassessors are set excessively high and the selection procedures are inadequate also;thirdly, the people’s assessors are not active enough during the whole trial; fourthly,the supervision, restraint are not perfect enough in Chinese mainland.In order to achieve judicial democracy, to manifest judicial authority and topromote judicial credibility, the recommends offered to the current system of people’sassessors are as follows: first of all, the whole system should be written into theconstitution, and the relevant laws and regulation should be unveiled as soon aspossible. Secondly, the conditions and procedures of selecting assessors should bemore scientific. The selection range should be expanded. Only by this can thedemocratic value of the system be manifested. Thirdly, the design of selecting rulesshould be refined, which can help guarantee the democracy during the selection.Fourthly, the trial mechanism should also be improved. The status of assessors in thecourt should be promoted. In the same time, the infamous work style ofaccompanying but do not participate the trial should be changed.