The Experience And Historical Origin Of The Circuit Court Reform In China

Since the reform and opening up,especially since the principal of rule of law has been established as the basic strategy of governance,China's judicial reform has embarked on a fast track.In the last 20 years,with four round of five-year reform plan of Chinese court system,many new systems have been put forward in China's judicial reform.After the Fourth Plenary Session of the 18 th CPC Central Committee held in 2014,the Supreme Court announced the fourth five-year reform plan in 2015,which showed an overwhelming reform trend in the court system.The circuit court of the Supreme People's court,as a landmark system initiative of the new round of judicial reform,was put forward in October 2014 and put into practice in January 2015.In just two months,it has entered the practical operation stage from the reform proposal.Since then,five years passed,and it has become a stable system.It is the right time for us to review the inheritance relationship between the circuit court and the judicial system of China and foreign traditions and evaluate its operation effect.The second chapter of this paper studies the literal meaning of “circuit court” or “circuit trail”,traces back to the circuit trial system and practice revolutionary period of the Communist Party of China and after the founding of the people's Republic of China.It shows the development process and operation mode of the circuit court in the judicial system outside the country.In addition,we explore its organizational status,leadership mode and system purpose of “Large District Court” which was prompted in the first few years of P.R.China.On this basis,this paper holds that the current circuit court system has only a weak inheritance relationship with the circuit trail tradition and the large district court in the early days of the people's Republic of China.The design of circuit court systems has a strong constructive feature and has more kinship with the "circuit court of appeal" in United States.The third chapter shows the problems in the operation of the circuit court.There are some problems in the circuit court,such as the pressure of letters and visits related to litigation is not reduced,the effect of case diversion is in doubt,and the litigation cost is not significantly reduced.It fails to achieve the system mission of stopping the judicial localization.The reason is that in the system design of judicial reform in China,there is a tendency to follow the advanced countries to introduce their systems and solve the immediate urgent problems.However,there is a lack of strategic consideration based on the domestic system tradition and long-term needs.Therefore,there are conflicts between the system and the idea in the judicial reform mode of “take and use”,which is not conducive to the sound and long-term development of the judicial system in China.The fourth chapter puts forward some suggestions for the attitude of “take and use” in judicial reform.The dynamic adjustment of judiciary system is for responding to the actual needs,so we should examine the judicial reality in our transition era and pay attention to the experience of the rule of law in our own practice and tradition.The judicial reform in the environmental field proposed by the Fourth Plenary Session of the 18 th CPC Central Committee have been actively explored by local courts.This reform has produced many creative practices,at the beginning,environment court were set in all three levels of Chinese courts,then certain courts were designated to hear the cases in a certain administrative region,and gradually developed to the present cross-regional jurisdiction decided by the type of case.This thesis believe that this way of reform can continuously adjust the apply method of a certain law or policy,which in somehow has the character of the “responsive law”.This path of reform would not only utilize and give full play to local court and national policy makers,it would be better if combining practices of top-level design and grass-roots exploration.This path may provide various solutions for the problems and difficulties including case pressure and personnel issues appeared in the circuit court reform in China nowadays.