I last wrote on judicial transparency in December (2018), giving a quick analysis of the Supreme People’s Court (SPC)’s latest transparency policy. Two quick updates on this topic:

1. The Fifth Judicial Reform Plan Outline (Opinions on Deepening the Reform of the Judicial System with Comprehensive Integrated Reforms – Outline of the Fifth Five-Year Reform Program of the People’s Courts (2019-2023) lists as one of the overall goals improving judicial transparency:

further deepen judicial openness, constantly improve the openness of the trial process, openness of court proceedings, openness of judgment documents, openness of enforcement information–the four transparency platforms, comprehensively expand the breadth and depth of judicial openness, improve the form of judicial openness, smooth the parties and lawyers to obtain judicial information channels, build a more open, dynamic, transparent, convenient sunshine judicial system.

The transparency developments highlighted in the Fifth Judicial Reform Plan Outline will be guided by the policy document Supreme People’s Court’s Opinion Concerning the Further Deepening of Judicial Transparency  (Judicial Transparency Opinion 最高人民法院关于进一步深化司法公开的意见)) that I wrote about in December.

2.  The article I mentioned as being in the academic article production pipeline has finally emerged.  It can be found here. It is a chapter from the book Transparency Challenges Facing China and examines some recent developments in China’s judicial transparency. It suggests that although the scope of judicial transparency is inevitably shaped by the requirements to keep state and trial work secrets confidential, the Supreme People’s Court, within the boundaries of what is politically achievable, is taking concrete steps to expand the scope of judicial transparency.  The article focuses on information on judges and courts, statistics and big data, and judicial normative documents, digging into relevant court rules and highlighting Chinese language commentary.  The article shows that views on judicial transparency within the Chinese judiciary are not as monolithic as an outsider might have initially assumed.