Tag Archives: judicial assistance

Communist Party and the Courts, Court Reform, Elderly law, Family Law

Supreme People’s Court rushes to achieve year end targets

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imgres-4The rush towards year end in the Supreme People’s Court (SPC), as in the business world, means a flurry of announcements of important developments, to ensure that the SPC meets its own performance targets.  Among the recent announcements are:

  • reform of the maritime courts, to make them internationally influential (this has both political and legal implications, blogpost to come);
  • approval by central Party authorities of the third round of judicial reform pilots, and the holding of a large scale meeting of representatives from the Leading Group on Judicial Reform with the SPC and Supreme People’s Procuratorate (SPP),  on the focus (personnel reforms) and roll out of these projects.  Jiang Wei,deputy director of the Office of the Central Leading Group for Judicial Reform, spoke along with his SPC and SPP counterparts.  Political legal committee secretaries from the pilot areas attended, along with court and procuratorate officials.
  • Reform of the family court system, announced at a conference held in Guangzhou, attended by Justice Du Wanhua, highlighting that the rush of judges to meet performance targets (closing cases) Iamong other factors) has had a negative effect on children, elderly, disabled, and women.  The SPC likely published typical/model family law cases in November (discussed in this  blogpost)  because pulling together those cases was part of the preparations for the Guangzhou conference;
  • progress report and further plans on improving judicial assistance (separate but related to legal assistance), with the release  of the2014  multi-agency document (Central Political Legal Committee, SPC, SPP, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Public Security, Ministry of Justice), stating that the central government had allocated 700 million RMB for judicial assistance and local governments  1.7 billion RMB, targeted at financial assistance for victims of crimes and others, with funds allocated to about 80,000 in 2014, (certainly a fraction of what is needed)
  • long pronouncement by Justice Shen Deyong on the “standardization” of the courts, citing the important status and important role of the judiciary in the governance of the country, but the growing contradiction between the needs of the people and  judicial resources and judicial capacity, decrying the lack of “top level design,” and calling for the implementation of related reforms.

This list will be supplemented later this month, as further announcements are made.

 

Taiwan

Supreme People’s Court update on the last 5 years of cross-straits judicial assistance (with 15 model cases)

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2009-2014 cross-straits judicial assistance (from chinacourt.org website)
2009-2014 cross-straits judicial assistance (from chinacourt.org website)

On 20 June, the Supreme People’s Court  issued a report on the past 5 years of judicial assistance with Taiwan, featuring three bar charts, a table and 15 model cases, linked here.  Judicial assistance between the mainland and Taiwan in 2013 was the subject of a blogpost earlier this year.  The execution of two brothers in Taiwan, on the basis of testimony from witnesses on the mainland who were not made available for cross-examination, illustrate vividly some of the Issues related to judicial assistance, as further described here.

Most of the judicial assistance has been in the form of requests for delivery on the mainland of judicial documents from Taiwan (almost 30,000 in the past 5 years), but has also included recognition and enforcement of Taiwan court judgments (270 in the past 5 years), requests for obtaining evidence on the mainland (610).

The model cases summarize the requests made and the assistance provided, rather than the original judgments or rulings in these cases.  (Prior blogposts on the topic of model cases are linked here and Mark Cohen’s analysis is found here).

The statistics reflect the closer interactions between the two sides of the Taiwan straits, including the flood of Taiwan investment into the mainland, and cross-straits personal interactions (including cross-straits marriages and crimes committed by Taiwanese on the mainland). I look forward to comments and further analysis from Taiwan lawyers, scholars and others on the significance of these statistics and other related issues.