China.org.cn | December 10, 2020
CNR:
As we know, China Judgments Online plays an important role in judicial practices, promoting both justice via openness and judicial big data research. I have a question for Mr. Yang. In the future, what efforts will be made to help the public deeply understand relevant legal provisions and main points of judicial documents during the legal education process? Thank you.
Yang Wanming:
Thank you for the question. The launching of China Judgements Online promotes full disclosure of judicial documents on the internet. This is one of the SPC's important judicial disclosure moves to implement the CPC Central Committee's strategic plan of overall law-based governance, adhere to the administration of justice for the people and maintaining judicial fairness, and respond to the new demands and expectations of the people in the current information age. The scale and scope of the move is unprecedented. Launched in July 2013, China Judgements Online has so far released more than 107 million copies of written judgments and attracted 52.4 billion visits, with an average daily increase of more than 80,000 copies. Just as the CNR reporter has said, online access to judicial documents is an important way to promote justice by releasing judgements online. It can effectively guarantee the people's rights to be informed, to participate, to express and to supervise so that the public credibility of the judiciary will be enhanced accordingly. Meanwhile, the judgements can play a role of education, evaluation, publicity and guidance. They are a vivid textbook for school legal education and the best material for legal research. The massive judgements made public by the people's courts are valuable judicial resources and the embodiment of the vivid practice of overall law-based governance. They are helpful for legal practitioners to study and research, as well as for the public to understand the trial work of the people's courts, anticipate the judgment results, abide by the law and avoid risks.
With the continuous development of the economy and society, people's awareness of the rule of law has been further enhanced and their needs for justice have become more diversified and the expectations for judicial openness have also increased. For judges, it is both a challenge and a responsibility to issue written judgments, make them public online, and accept the public's supervision. People's courts will continue to promote the publicizing of written judgments and provide effective judicial services for advancing economic and social development. The specific measures are as follows:
First, by constantly advancing information technology for publicizing of written judgments, more intelligent and humanized services will be provided to all sectors of society. China Judgments Online website will be further upgraded and improved, making queries and retrieval more convenient for users and provide a friendlier interface, faster responses, and offer more intelligent and humanized services. We will optimize the automatic linkage among the first, second, and retrial documents of the same case. Based on retrieval results, the system will automatically list documents of relevant cases as well as related legal provisions. It will also prioritize both the documents of instructive cases and typical cases of the Supreme People's Court and list exemplary written judgments on the homepage of the website so as to better serve the general public.
Second, we will constantly strengthen the interpretation and reasoning of the written judgments so as to make them more authoritative. We will steadily promote the reform on judgment writing, which will refine the focus of disputes and spell out the main points of the court's judgments in plain language. We will classify the written judgments into complex ones and simple ones in accordance with the nature and trial-level of the cases. We will further intensify reasoning of written judgments for first-instance cases that contain disputes among parties, complicated legal relationships, or are of high public interest, all second-instance and retrial cases, as well as the cases that are discussed and decided by the judicial committee, so as to enhance their credibility.
Third, we will continue to deepen and explore the utilization of written judgments resources and promote data sharing, cooperation, and exchanges with other departments. We will continue to adhere to the principle of "big data, big pattern, and big service." We will also continue to explore, integrate, and utilize written judgments resources using broader means and at deeper levels in order to fully realize the potential value of judicial trial data resources. We will strive to make sure cases with similar scenarios and facts are approached in the same way and carry forward standardization of sentencing by analyzing massive data and provide important references for the scientific decision-making of the Party, governments and people's courts through in-depth analysis of the development trend of various disputes.
Those are my answers. Thank you.