Research On The Reform Of Criminal Jury System In China

The democratic and political value of the criminal jury system,one of the important lawsuit systems,become more obvious today in which the judicial reform is being carried on.The merge of the institutionalized public opinions into the criminal justice not only meets the practical demand of the judicial democratization,but also contributes to the allocation of the judicial resources,judicial supervision and judicial fairness.The criminal jury system in China has been asked about the actual utility since it came into effect.The dissemination of application in practice results in the labeling of vast system,therefore pushes the legislators,judicial officials and scholars to think about how to make it operate effectively.The reasons why the practice is in trouble are as follows:firstly,the interior design of system is unreasonable which makes the institution operates ineffectively;secondly,the lack of external safeguard mechanism decreased the participation rate of jurors dramatically.Even in the experiment area,the new rules still perform poorly.In order to alleviate the current contradiction between the theoretical assumption and realistic suitability of the criminal jury system,the writer wants to explore and analyze the causes of difficulties by taking this experimental reform as an opportunity,and referring to the successful experience,lessons and the reforming trend of three jurisdictions in East-Asia(Japan,South Korea and Taiwan).Based on the previous discussion,the writer will come up with the reforming proposition of the system in line with the reality of the society in China,hoping to contribute to the reforming jury system and the judicial reform.The first part is the introduction primarily raising the topic and clarifying the conception of jury system,assessor system and criminal jury system.Meanwhile,this part will review the current research all over the world in order to accurately define the theme of the paper.The second part explains the legitimacy and value of the criminal jury system.On the one hand,the writer proves the legitimacy of the system from three perspectives:people have judicial sovereignty;institutionalized public opinion is the legal source of public participation in justice;the dynamic game between judicial popularization and elitism stresses justice appropriately.On the other hand,the value of criminal jury system is recognized from political,judicial and law economic aspects.The third part is to analyze the current situation of criminal jury system in China and the causes of difficulties via case analysis and empirical study,leading to the conclusion that the internal and external reasons collectively result in the system performed poorly.In addition,the writer reviews the reform in experimental area,acknowledging the achievements in these areas and meanwhile focusing on the alienation of theories and practices.The forth part introduces the reform of criminal jury system of three jurisdictions in East-Asia(Japan,South Korea and Taiwan).In order to find their successful common experience,the writer is going to comparatively analyze their respective system design,localization of function,operation effects and the new trends in reforms to provide a new thinking for the deconstruction and construction of our system.The fifth part is the proposition of the reform on the criminal jury system.Combined with the difficulties mentioned in the third part and the successful experience,lessons of the three legal areas in East-Asia mentioned above,there are several corresponding suggestions:In terms of the subject,Jurors need be active instead of being passive;In terms of the internal design of the system,it is supposed to adhere to the classification of selection mechanism,combination of popular jury with professional jury,clarification of the trial type of cases,exploration of the collegial bench model,and proper separation of revision of the facts and that of laws.In terms of external safeguard mechanism,it is necessary to establish a multi-sector cooperation mechanism,to strengthen juror 's safeguards and financial guarantee,and to extend publicity.Meanwhile,we need to reform the existing single evaluation system of jurors and clear the mechanism of reward.