Improvement Of Pre-trial Conference System's Application In Grass-roots Courts

Since the pre-trial conference system (hereinafter refer to as "the System")'s first adoption by Wayne Court,Michigan State, the United States as a means to avoid backlog of legal cases in 1929, it has experienced three phases of establishment,development and revision. After years of development, the System has been introduced and established in many countries. In view of the prominent contradiction between high load of legal cases and insufficient personnel, how to improve the litigation efficiency becomes a major issue in China's current judicial field. Under this context,the System has been directly included in the Interpretation of Civil Procedural Law of the People's Republic of China. The pace of the building of a Rule of Law society in China is relatively slow and Chinese citizens do not have strong awareness of civil rights. Under this context,overstepping historical steps and introducing western "advanced" judicial approaches, we must consider to localize the transplanted foreign system, in other words,such system need to comply with China's national conditions. Otherwise, it may"acclimatized" and be a mere formality. In practice,how to conform to the development trend of rule of law while in line with China's national conditions is a major issue need to be resolved during the System's application in China.This article based on the daily working modes of People's Court,County J,City J,and takes the court's data as main samples. It conducts theoretical,practical analysis of the System's application. Through that,it gains an understanding of some unexpected results and deficiency while the System's application in judicial practices. Moreover,more understanding is obtained about different levels of behind reasons and aims to propose more detailed and feasible enhancement measures. This article is in four chapters. Chapter 1 introduces the law-making stipulation, value and functions of the System. At the same time, summarizes the achievement of the System's application in County J's Court via data comparisons,questionnaire surveys and group discussions. It shows it is rational to adopt the System in civil rights cases. Also it sums up good approaches during the System's application via horizontal comparison of such in two courts. Chapter 2, by examining various feedbacks of the System, conducts a profound analysis of reasons for the System's adoption in three aspects: legal procedure setting,main participants' understanding and actual conditions. It aims to provide reference to enhance the system. Chapter 3 briefly introduces and makes a comprehensive analysis of the System in different countries' civil proceedings, trying to understand different countries systems'advantages. Chapter 4 based on the System's actual operations,elaborates in five aspects: moderator,mode of communication,legal consequence,working model, initialize conditions and legal effect. It offers concrete thoughts to improve the System and provides theoretical suggestions on how to perfect the correspondingly litigation system in accordance with our national conditions.