On The "Quasi-Defender" Of Duty Lawyer In China

The duty lawyer system was originally designed to compensate for the lack of the"first kilometer"by making use of its timely,preliminary,professional,and low-cost legal services.But in our country,duty lawyer system has been given more meaning in the"Chinese style reform".The Supreme People's Court,the Supreme People's Procuratorate,and the Ministry of Public Security issued a series of normative documents on the duty lawyer system.The duty la?wyer system is required to be a necessary link in the process of the reform of various litigation systems,as well as supporting measures to supervise and guarantee the legitimacy of the procedure,protect the litigation rights of criminal suspects,criminal defendants,human rights,and other rights,and ultimately guarantee the fairness of the judiciary.More importantly,duty counsel was included in our new Code of Criminal Procedure in 2018.However,in practice,the duty lawyers still have problems such as the inability to perform their duties,the failure to effectively realize the role of ensuring the voluntary nature of confession and punishment,and the alienation of the duty lawyers system.This is rooted in the development of the duty lawyer system in our country,which does not give the duty lawyer accurate positioning and is limited to the background of confession and punishment,ignoring the analysis and consideration of the rationality of the duty lawyer system as a supporting measure.In this regard,in the future development direction,the duty lawyer should be"quasi-defender." The first is to better guarantee the voluntary nature of confession and punisFhment by traditional legal aid.Instead of turning duty lawyers into"defenders",they are given responsibilities that should not be assumed in order to adapt to the framework set by existing normative documents.Second,the duty lawyers will return to provide timely,basic,low-cost basic legal services.The duty lawyer system will be returned to the track of making up for traditional legal aid and entrusting lawyers.In this way,a real duty lawyer system is established that conforms to the position and characteristics of the duty lawyer.