The Right to a Criminal Appeal in the People\u27s Republic of China

Nineteen-seventy-nine was a watershed year for the People\u27s Republic of China. Recovering from the destructive Cultural Revolution, the nation began its present period of growth and modernization, including the reinstatement of its legal institutions. As part of its attempt to transform itself into a state ruled by law, the People\u27s Republic enacted its first criminal procedure code in 1979, including a detailed formal procedure for criminal appeals

Law and Discretion in the Contemporary Chinese Courts

The last twenty years of Chinese legal reforms have been particularly interesting to scholars and activists alike. During this period, Chinese legal reforms have moved from purely substantive changes in economic laws to the realm of domestic structural reforms of the court system. Today, legal reformers are discussing the use of open trials, adversarial advocacy, and even judicial independence. This Article explores how far some of these reforms may go by considering the path of structural and procedural changes adopted by the Chinese courts in the past twenty years. It includes an analysis of the tension faced by all legal systems in balancing law and predictability with equity and discretion. It focuses on how the Chinese have utilized an ideology of supervision in maintaining this balance, and predicts the future course of legal reforms in China

Court Reform with Chinese Characteristics

In Court Reform on Trial: Why Simple Solutions Fail, Malcolm Feeley identified a number of obstacles that undermine reforms of the United States court system. Feeley’s proposed solution was to adopt a problem-oriented “rights strategy”—letting the courts themselves solve their problems through litigation. This is because litigation is a forum in which courts are well placed to identify specific problems and devise pragmatic solutions. This Article takes a look at this proposition in the context of court reforms in China and concludes that courts (and law) are also a reflection of national goals and identity. Any reforms to a court system must not only take into consideration expectations and realistic goals, but also the fundamental identity of a particular legal system. In a top-down society like China, national goals—and hence, national identity—are defined by the Chinese Communist Party. Chinese courts have come a long way in their reforms and court reforms in China have often been couched in the language of national goals. Any proposed court reforms that challenge national goals and identity are doomed to fail