Study On Judicial Ritual

Justice is symbolic justice, which is practical and symbolic. The implementation of legal justice in one country is not in the stage of the enactment of law more than in the enforcement and application stage. People can experience the abstract legal justice directly through the trial and the judgment. Just as:"Ritual guards the portals of the sacred, and one of its functions is to preserve those taboos essential to an ongoing society through the sense of awe that ritual invokes; ritual, in other words, is a dramatized representation of sacred power."As the representation of justice, Judicial Ritual is the carrier of justice and judicial power.Judicial ritual carries out in a relative closed space in accordance with a set of rules procedures established. In this process the judicial power can be found. Judicial ritual, as a special ritual, is not ideas and ideologies in the culture, but the mode of symbol and behavior. In a particular judicial ritual, fairness and justice need to performance in a certain method, the trial contains symbolic symbols and behaviors, including the spatial layout of the court and solemn style of the court building, symbolic robe and gavel, expressions, tone and language, behavior of participant and strict disciplinary rules of the court, etc. Those made the legal relationship must operate in accordance with modern judicial logic of the rule of law, such as"legal sanctity","equality before the law".Judicial officers performance the judicial ritual according to rules we have owned in our county, it indicate that signs and symbols of judicial ritual play very important role in rule of law, but there are many problems in the judicial ritual operation, such as ubiquitous, too much focus on form, uncertainty and unpredictability of legal procedures. The deeper reason of these problems is the symbolic meaning and the society feeing reflected from the judicial ritual is inconsistent with the spirit and the concept of rule of law. This resulted by judicial system, culture of law and psychology. Standardized and unified, dignified and serious, authority and sacred is the main purpose of judicial ritual pursued, the current situation conflicted with these.Judicial Professionalism is the basis of this paper. Judicial ritual forum, which including to make the signs and symbols system of judicial ritual have the dramatic structure; the count, the subject of judicial operation, can format a modern culture idea, equality and democracy environment; build the faith to the law of the people. Solemn, serious, standard and unified judicial ritual is not only benefit for the socialist rule of law, but also benefit to the realization of judicial impartiality and independence and supplying for equal opportunity to participant in the trial. It can guarantee judicial authority and credibility and prevention from judicial corruption.There are five parts in this paper.Beginning with combing anthropology and sociology theory, the first part discusses the theory of ritual. The nature of the ritual should be a social behavior, which is the process of social practice. This paper defines ritual as the extend of faith and cognitive model, which is take place in a special occasions, place, time, in accordance with certain procedure and method, for a special mass to symbolic behavior. Thus, a sacred, dramatic and procedural ritual plays the role of maintenance of social order. The content of the ritual should be a dynamic system of social behavior, it is closely linked with the symbol, and outside into the symbolic system of signs.The second part discusses judicial ritual theory. The content includes the necessary of study on judicial ritual in the judicial forum in our country, discussing the different approach to judicial ritual from nation and abroad to find out the theory basis of this study. Based on the ritual theory, this study discusses judicial ritual as a whole system to find its characters and meanings. In the process of law operation, judicial ritual expresses the value, meaning and spirit of rule of law through its particular symbolism. It has no difficulty to find the characters of judicial ritual, such as dramatic, symbolic, metaphorical and sacred.With reference to specific forms of signs and symbols, the structure of judicial ritual contains five factors. In the third part discusses the content and the symbolism of these factors. Under the guidance of the action-place theory, the whole symbolism of judicial ritual should include the noting, operating and directing respects. Under the perspective of structural functionalism we will discuss the social faction of judicial ritual.Under the condition of social transformation in china, many impacts and challenges come across judicial ritual operation. Through case-study, we can find there are popular, uncertainty and unpredictability and formalization in the operation of judicial ritual. In China, verdict decided by judicial committee, so the trial separated from sentence; the relationship between people's court at different level is in bad order; these are the legal and culture reasons for the maladies affecting judicial ritual. We will discuss these respects in the forth part. Traditional Chinese legal culture was based on ethics and moral principles which made it very difficult for modern spirit of rule of law to take shape. Given the remaining distaste for litigation, judicial independence is unlikely to be valued. In addition, the lack of belief in due process has caused the uncertainty and unpredictability of legal procedures.The five parts discusses the rebuild of judicial ritual. Judicial profession is the necessary path to the judicial ritual forum. If we make the judicial ritual we must consist in the outside of the judicial power to construct judicial ritual into a dramatized representation. As the main runner of judicial operation, the counts have democracy and equality cultural system; it is necessary to training for legal beliefs adapted to China. Judicial ritual construction is the possible path to rule of law in China.The last part is the conclusion. If it is important method to realize legal fairness through the legal process reach legal justice, the declaration of justice through ritual should be one of the methods to realize modern judicial forum and legal profession. In a sense, justice should be realized through the exercises of judicial ritual.