On The Day-to-day Experience Of The Judges

A tide of realistic jurisprudence spread in America earlier lastcentury, whose core proposition was “empirism”. Holmels pointed out theimportance of experience with his “the life of law is not logic butexperience”. Contrast to common law countries, China is a statute lawcountry. This key distinction leads to different approaches and methodsjudges use in judicial proceedings, thus the necessity to discuss thepractice of law in our country. On one hand, a research into the dailypractice in people’s court can comprehensively showcase the life and workstyle of base-level judges, and on the other, help us with a newappreciation to the judges’ experience. However, currently scholars havevery little study on the “daily practice” of the judges in people’scourt, which sets lots of impediment during the process of collectingmaterials and writing.This essay discloses the daily practice of a “typical” judge inpeople’s court. There are two reasons to call him “typical”, one isthat he has29years of court work experience, and the other one is thathe embodies the characteristics of judges in inland courts, which to someextent can be viewed as the epitome of judges in inland courts.In terms of the outline of this essay, the introduction brings out thereasons to study the judge’s daily practice and the significance of thisstudy.The first part is “the judge’s daily practice: concept and feature”,a theoretical approach to “experience”. It deals with the cardinalconcept of “empirsim” of realistic jurisprudence, including therelation between experience and logic, and the content of experience.Starting from saying China belongs to a different legal family, whichleads to the “daily practice” of the judge in people’s court, theconcept of judge’s “daily practice” and its features are analyzed indetail.The second part is “the judge’s daily practice: comes from anddemonstrates the real life and work”. The first chapter deals with thelife experience and work experience of Li Zhongshun, who became the masterof the local map and local knowledge because of his experience. Chaptertwo introduces the interactions between Li Zhongshun and suburban cadres,which tells us one of his ways to accumulate life and work experience isto interact with the suburban cadres. Chapter three mentioned the relationbetween the judge and country caliber Li Changde, pointing out the reasonsleading to their relationship, and the help to his work. Chapter fourillustrates the exchange between he and Liu Zhijun, who is also a legalpractice, including a simple analyze of their model of exchange. At theend of this part, the functions of daily experience are concluded.The third part is “daily practice facilitates disputes settlement: acase as the base”. The choice of case in this part is cohesive with the functions of daily experience in the second part. The choice of caseaccentuates the typical nature of the case, involving all the processesfrom establishing a case to closing a case. And the case chosen is verycommon in that area. More specifically, it involves loans, divorce,support the elderly, and traffic accident. From this case we can learnthe real picture of country judicial practice.Through theoretical analysis and case argument on the daily experienceof the judge, it is pointed out that a judge’s daily experience shouldhave the power of reality, and be respected and honored.