The Judge’s Responsibility System

The judge’s responsibility system is one measure of the new reform of the judicial system, which aims to establish a compatible judicial responsibility system, which is unified with "the authority, the responsibility, the interest and the ability" Also, it aims to realize the de-administration of judicial system, enhance the presiding judge independent judgment by its power, prevent miscarriages of justice and to meet the requirements of the reform, which means "the reviewers don’t judge convicted without trial". The purpose of the system is to regulate the judge’s judicial behaviors, prevent miscarriages of justice and set up the judicial credibility.Different from the previous research access, this paper choose the judge’s rational behaviors under the restriction of system as the research objective, to investigate under which system the judge will behave as the system designers anticipate, which signifies the optimal incentive system. When the judge is exercising the jurisdiction, he will list the following variables of his own interests gain and loss, such as:the possibility of making a wrong j udgment, the possibility of being detected when he makes a wrong judgment and the possibility to undertake the adverse consequences when he is responsible for the wrong judgment. When the cost of the wrong judgment is less than the interest of it, the judge will make a wrong judgment.According to the empirical statistics of past misjudged cases, we would find out that the occurrence of misjudged cases has the following features. Firstly, according to the occurrence time of misjudged cases, when the social security is weak, it is easier for misjudged cases to occur. At that time, as the courts undertake the administrative responsibility of "stable maintenance", "severely and quickly" are the principal requirements. This kind of high efficient judicial work is more likely to cause misjudged cases. Secondly, from the misjudged cases involved in the criminal charges, personal injury cases accounted for the largest part. On one hand, the social harmfulness of such cases is so large that it’s easy to catch the attention of the society. In these cases, "public opinion" plays an important role in the judge’s judgment. On the other hand, there are direct victims in such cases, who have more motivation to promote the process of judicial procedure. Thirdly, due to the dependence of lower-level courts and higher-level courts and the case discussion system of adjudication committee, the possibility of misjudged cases and the possibility of misjudged cases to be detected are very low, which will reduce the misjudged cases’ risk and cost. When the cost of the wrong judgment is less than the interest of it, the judge will make a wrong judgment to preserve his reputation and status.Therefore, it is essential to add the cost of wrong judgment to overweigh its cost to realize the function of the judge’s responsibility systems. Firstly, it is important to definite the limitation of liability of the judge’s responsibility system. Compared to making the case entity error as the limitation of liability, judge’s arbitrary behaviors is easier to be supervised and is conducive for judges to control their own behaviors, which prevent excessive deterrence. Secondly, we should increase the possibility of detecting wrong judgments by strengthening the external supervision procedures. On one hand, we should cancel the performance appraisal standard to evaluate the quality of the judge’s judgment, for which is based on the retrial rate and the wrong judgment rate, which is beneficial to weaken the administrative relationship between higher and lower court and realize the function of appeals system to supervise wrong judgments. Last but not least, we should optimize the current responsibility punishment system, to form a responsibility system which combines Party discipline responsibility, administrative responsibility, civil responsibility and criminal responsibility, to achieve the optimal deterrent effect by raising the penalties.