This newly published volume 刑法注释书（Criminal Law Treatise), the first volume in a series of treatises for practitioners, is critical for understanding how Chinese judges and other practitioners approach China’s Criminal Law.  This reference work was edited by He Fan, head of the planning section of the Supreme People’s Court Judicial Reform Office.  He has a PhD in criminal law.  Earlier in his career was a policeman and a criminal court judge, so he has insights from the world of practice about what judges and others who need to understand the law on a particular crime correctly (正确). The idea from the volume arose from a project that he did with the Shanghai Higher People’s Court. And He Fan notes in his article introducing the book that the organizing principle for this book is influenced by a volume on Criminal Law edited by Hsu Yu-hsiu, former grand justice on Taiwan’s Constitutional Court and a handbook on search and seizure by Taiwan National University Professor Lin Yu-Hsiung. Both books draw on the approach of traditional Chinese criminal law books of setting out the statute provisions with annotations (注释).

The book assembles in a single deceptively small volume the principal sources of law and guidance that those involved in the criminal justice system in China need to access.

The organizing principle for the book is as follows:

1. legislation–article of the law and any prior versions of the article, with any explanation (说明), including explanations of the amendment (立法-要点注释);
2. Related legislation (相关立法);
3. legislative interpretations (立法解释); (these are binding and have a higher status than judicial interpretations);
4. Legislative opinions of an interpretive nature (立法解释性意见)–responses by the Legislative Affairs Commission (and its Criminal Law Office) on issues of criminal law.  These do not have a formal status under Chinese law, but are authoritative guidance. (Thank you to Changhao Wei, NPC Observer, for this comments on this) ;
5. judicial interpretations (司法解释) (these can be by the SPC, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate (SPP), or the two together. These have a formal legal status under Chinese law and the SPC and SPP have declared that they have the status of law;
6. judicial guiding documents (司法指导文件)–these are documents providing guidance on criminal law issues from the Central Political-Legal Commission, the SPC and its Research Office, various criminal divisions, SPP and its Policy and Research Office, and other related documents (as mentioned in the previous blogpost, these types of documents lack a formal status, but are highly authoritative);
7. judicial interpretations–annotations司法解释-注释 and judicial guiding documents–annotations 司法指导性文件-注释–these are related “understanding and application” documents (相关文件理解与适用) authoritative explanations by the drafters of judicial interpretations and judicial guiding documents (previous blogposts have drawn on these “understanding and application documents”);
8. If multiple judicial interpretations have been issued on an issue, annotations to each;
9. Guiding cases–courts 指导性案例-法院 (translations available at the China Guiding Cases Project);
10. Guiding cases–procuratorate指导性案例-检察 (translations of many available at Chinalawtranslate.com);
11. SPC bulletin cases 法院公报案例 (I have written about the hierarchy various types of SPC approved cases in my Tsinghua China Law Review article);
12. Court reference cases 法院参考案例 (these refer to the cases in Reference to Criminal Trial, the publication of the five criminal divisions of the SPC), also mentioned in my article and a January, 2018 blogpost;
13. public security documents ( 公安文件)–documents of the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), the MPS legal affairs bureau, the economic crime investigation bureau and other related guidance documents).