Lenin’s Judicial Thoughts And Development Of People’s Jury System In China

In1917, Russian Bolshevik Party won the great victory of the October Revolution and then established the first socialist country. Lenin, the leader of the party, is not only a faithful successor to Marxism, but also develops Marxist legal thought into his own legal system on the basis of Marx’s legal theory and the actual situation in Russia. As an important part of Lenin’s legal theory, his judicial thoughts include theory of popular sovereignty, theory of Democratic Centralism, theory of power supervision and so on. The common issue he refers to in all his theories above is people jury system. For example, in the theory of popular sovereignty, he thinks people’s participation in the judgement system, the so-called people jury system, is the best way to the popularity of judiciary and implementation of popular sovereignty. For the realization of democracy in popular sovereignty and judiciary, Lenin sets up the ideology and theory of people jury and puts his theory into the establishment of judicial system.In the early years of new China, we introduced the Soviet judicial system based on the theory of Lenin’s judicial thought and established our own judicial system. In China, the system of people’s assessors is a product of study and development of the counterpart in former Soviet Union. Lenin’s thought of regarding people as the jury plays an important role in the development of people’s jury system in former Soviet Union as well as China.This paper shall review the theory and practice of people jury system in China with the people jury theory in Lenin’s judicial thought. With the guidance of Lenin’s judicial thought, the paper will discuss about the actual situation of our current people jury system. Only on the basis of clear theoretical knowledge, can we improve legislation and implementation of the system. What is more, the theory will be of great help in the process of selection, appointment and training of the people’s assessors. All the discussion above shall reflect the contemporary value of the theory of Lenin’s judicial thought.