Research On The Intermediate And Basic Courts Trial Committee Under The Background Of Judicial Reform

The judicial committee system originated in the new democracy period, which is a quite characteristic system in the court trial work system of our country. The trial committee plays a positive roles in ensuring the quality of the case, summarizing the experiences of the trial, and unify the referee scale. Recently, with the advancement of judicial reform, the judicial committee system has been constantly questioned, these questions mainly focused on the followings; the trial committee against the judicial independence, the judicial justice, the judicial efficiency and the judicial responsibility, which are contrary to the system of public trial, avoidance, panel discussion, people assessor, defense and debate. Besides, with the improving of the judge quality and the changing of the courts function, some scholars consider that the trial committee system has not meet the needs of the situation, which causes the dispute on preserving or abolishing the judicial committee system.The arising of the trial committee is influenced by traditional legal culture, the political system and the limitation of judicial conditions, which has great Chinese characteristics, without universal significance. It is different from the Anglo-American jury system, judges meeting in Taiwan, China, but on the establishing purpose and operation mode have some similarities. According to the Organic Law of the People's Courts and related documents, the trial committee can summarize as following three major functions, which contains sum up the trial experiences, discuss and decide major, difficult, complex or new types of cases and discuss other relevant judicial work. But in actual operation, due to the different levels of the judicial committee, the function is alienation, which leads the supreme people's court and the basic people's court undertake different tasks and play different roles. Taking an intermediate people's court in Hunan province for example, the court trial committee's main task is discuss difficult cases in actual operation. The main types of these difficult cases are contains the limitation of the law rules, the inadequate evidences, the unfair of the results, the complex relations and the influences of the case. Nevertheless, the court trial committee plays an important role in improving the cases qualities, decomposition the case pressures and supervising the judge's behaviors. But the problem that the personnel is not scientific, they work high and low affect the trial efficiency, avoiding responsibility and leaking trial confidential are still existed. The situation reflected in the court, also represents the running situation of immediate and basic courts trial committee in some areas of China.November 12,2013, the Third Plenary Session of the Party's eighth consideration, "the CPC Central Committee decision on deepening reform of the overall number of major issues", adopted on deepening the reform of judicial system were fully deployed. The part of the courts in pilot are promoting the judicial reform steadily in China. The reform explicitly requested “from the trial judge, judge is responsible for”. There is no doubt that the configuration of judicial power will be more scientific, reasonable and conform to the legal rules after the judicial reform. However, the judicial reform can not change the situation of legal gap and the difficulty in deal with difficult cases, the collegial panel still faces greater stresses and professional risks under the existing judicial environment, which can not be changed in a short time. In this situation, we should continue to retrain the intermediate and basic courts trial committee in a period of time and play its transition function. For reform and development needs,the trial committee also should be repositioned after the judicial reform. As a case's internal audit organization, the trial committee mainly deal with difficult cases,eliminate the interference through the collective research and serve as a safeguard of trial independence for a specific period. The trial committee should distinguish different functions from the Court Dang Zu Hui,the President's office,handle the relationship with the business court,collegiate bench,and do not override,not offside. At the same time, in order the trial committee plays better role in maintenance the cases' fairness and justice, we should strengthen its team construction, improve its operation pattern and strengthen its responsibilities. Specifically, whether the case submitted to judicial committee to discuss is decided by a collegial panel. At the same time, according to the actual circumstances of the case, we should enrich the discussion ways, changing the debriefing as the only form in present trial committee. If the trial committee deny the collegial panel's opinions, we should distinguish the requirements of the judicial committee's vote, not a simple majority required collegial panel to obey, we should respect the referee' s status and the collegial panel's opinions. With the improvement of the legal system and the rule of law, the trial committee shall eventually quit the historical stage after the periodic task has finished.