Development, Dilemma And Perfection Of The Case Guiding System In China

In Second Five Year’s Reform Outline of 26 October 2005, the Supreme People’s Court put forward clearly to establish and perfect case guiding systems, and also pay attention to the important role in unifying the law application, directing the lower people’s courts’judicial work and developing the legal theory. This was the first time for the Supreme People’s Court to declare the intention to establish case guiding systems in the form of formal instrument. The Supreme People’s Court insisted to explore the case guiding system in the subsequent works. On 15 November 2010, Provisions Related to Case Guiding Work of the Supreme People’s Court was published and case guiding system in China was also formally established. In a manner of speaking, the establishment of case guiding system was on basis of the desire of judicial practice and longtime exploration. The exploration and establishment of the case guiding system is also an important measure of judicial reform. Case guiding system plays an important role in unifying the law application, solving the problem of similar cases with different results and ensuring the judicial justice. Different countries have different judicial system due to social, history and culture background, which requires case guiding system in China should be established on national conditions and judicial practices of Chinese characteristics. In the meanwhile, the development and perfection of case guiding system should not be separated from the reference of similar legal system, especially case laws in Anglo-American legal system and precedent system in continental legal system. By way of comparing system models under different legal environments, the inner core of case guiding system is the guiding power of guiding cases.The nature of case guiding system and effect, publishment, operation, applicable system, criterion and procedure of guiding cases were always the main issues in discussion since the establishment of case guiding system. With the development of case guiding system, the basic frame of case guiding system has been formed preliminarily inclusive of but not limited to generation, publish, application, abolishment of guiding cases. However, guiding cases did not play its own role in the judicial practices by one of the main reasons that guiding cases were lacking of de facto legal binding as well as supervision and safeguard system. This paper is expected to provide some references for the establishment of case guiding system from the perspective of development history, development difficulties and reasons and how to perfect the case guiding system.