Recently the Supreme People’s Court (SPC) took another step in making its Gazette accessible to a mass audience, by establishing an electronic platform accessible from the Supreme People’s Court website:  www.gongbao.court.gov.cn.

What benefits does the Gazette webpage have for the user? They include easy:

1. Access to the cases published in the Gazette.  As this blog has highlighted earlier. cases published in the Gazette, both  selected judgments (裁判文书选登), cases decided by various trial divisions of the SPC and reflect their views on certain issues, and cases (案例), model cases submitted by the local courts (through the provincial high courts), which have been reviewed by the various trial divisions of the SPC, are considered quite persuasive, although not as authoritative as guiding cases. Those can be accessed through a full text search of the term being researched.
2. Checking of which lawyers frequently practice at the SPC, through searching “selected judgments.”
3. Following the careers of SPC judges. Below is a search for Huang Songyou, the disgraced SPC vice president:
4. Searching prior SPC reports to the NPC for key words, such as ”judicial reform“ or “state security.”
5. Searching historical judicial statistics, for certain terms–second instances returned results, while “death penalty review” did not.
6. Searching of judicial interpretations and judicial documents (policy and other SPC documents not considered to be judicial interpreations.)