| Constructing a socialist country ruled by law is the strategic decision-making taken by the CPC and the central government. Also it is the basic condition for the social stability. As an important part of the judicial system, criminal justice system plays an essential role in promoting China’s construction of a socialist country ruled by law.Justice is the value goal pursued by criminal justice system and also the origin of life for the criminal justice system. In order to realize judicial justice, judicial reform has been putting on the important agenda at four national party congresses from1997to2012. Furthermore, judicial reform guidelines have been included into the CPC congress reports. In order to implement the principles of judicial reform proposed by the central government, the Supreme People’s Court issued three Outline of Five-year Reform for People’s Court on October20,1999, October26,2005and March17,2009respectively, which affirmed that the criminal justice reform of the people’s court is to eliminate the institutional and structural barriers that hinder the people’s courts from independently performing criminal judicial authority, rationalize the relations between the people’s relations and other state organs, allocate the functions and powers of people’s court on a rational basis, standardize the judges’ behaviors in criminal justice, realize the justice in criminal justice and substantive justice, improve the efficiency of criminal justice and maintain the authority of criminal justice. In brief, the aim of judicial reform is to enable China’s criminal justice system better reflect ethical spirit, meet the public ethical requirements, demonstrate the principle of human rights protection, realize judicial justice and become more viable. From the perspective of ethics, ethical theories and methods are applied in this study to reflect on the legal system of criminal justice and criminal trial practices so as to provide an ethical value standard for the improvement and legislation of China’s criminal justice system and furnish ethical countermeasures for the elimination of inequity in criminal trial practices.This dissertation consists of six chapters:Chapter one is the introduction. The topic selection and the theoretical and practical significance of this study is analyzed and discussed from three aspects:construction of socialist country ruled by law, judicial reform and elimination of judicial injustice in criminal justice. The status quos of ethical studies on criminal justice at home and abroad are briefly introduced and the related research results are allocated. Based on this, the deficiencies in ethical researches of criminal justice are pointed out; the innovation point of this dissertation is made clear:this is a doctoral dissertation which first studies the ethic in criminal justice in China, proposes some new concepts in terms of relations between law and morality and puts forward some new ideas about the positions and historical trends of judicial authority and the party involved in resolving criminal disputes; the research method is also introduced in this chapter.Chapter two introduces the general theory of criminal justice ethics. The meaning, features, content and function of criminal justice ethics are explained. Criminal justice ethics is ethical code of ethics followed by the state when designing laws of criminal justice, by people’s court when exercising its power in criminal justice and by the judges when performing criminal justice. Criminal justice ethics is also the standard of value for people to judge whether a criminal justice and the judge’s behavior are justified and proper; criminal justice ethics is characterized with class nature, historic significance, diversity in adjustment objects, standardized form, non-standardized form, heteronomy and autorhythmicity in modes of execution; the content of criminal justice ethics involves ethics in criminal justice system and judge’s behaviors; the functions of criminal justice ethics include guidance, evaluation, regulation and demonstration.Chapter three involves the ethical basis for criminal justice system. Starting from the relations between morality and laws, the theories proposed by ancient Chinese Confucianism, school of natural law in the West and school of positive law are introduced; the observation of the origin and evolution of morality and laws indicates that law is the product of morality and morality is the spiritual pillar of law, while law is the politic pillar of morality. All laws contain human ethical spirit, all legal activities have moral principles; judicial decisions are legal judgments and conclusive evidence for morality. The obedience to judge’s judgment equals to the obedience to the morality contained in law; the relations between law and morality equal to the relation between standards and value. The value is featured by origin nature and preexistence. Criminal justice system should have justice before being widely obeyed people. Therefore, justice is the ethical basis for criminal justice system.Chapter four discusses the justice in criminal justice proceedings. Starting from clarification of the meanings of proceedings, legal procedure and criminal proceedings, this chapter discusses the roles of criminal justice proceedings in preventing judge’s misconducts, ensuring judge’s reasonable cognition, stopping external intervene in criminal justice and improving the efficiency of resolving criminal disputes; the concepts of justice of criminal proceedings of naturalism, common law countries and Rawls’s are introduced; the six procedural justice standards are elucidated; and the significance of criminal justice proceedings is analyzed.Chapter five analyzes the substantive justice of criminal justice. The meaning of substantive justice of criminal justice is explained and the judgment standard of substantive justice of criminal justice is identified; the conditions for substantive justice of criminal justice and the main factors influencing the realization of substantive justice of criminal justice are analyzed; the meaning and definition of misjudged criminal cases in criminal justice practices are identified; the harm and causes of misjudged criminal cases are analyzed; and ethics measures and criminal legal measures to prevent misjudged criminal cases are proposed.Chapter six involves the ethical analyses of criminal reconciliation, including the definition of criminal reconciliation, discussion of the theory of criminal reconciliation; analysis of the theoretical value of criminal reconciliation; analysis of ethical risks of criminal reconciliation; suggestion of moral and legal countermeasures to prevent criminal reconciliation. |
