Research On Judges’ Attitude To Public Opinion Supervision

The special cases in this thesis belongs to pending cases which are still in the preceding trial without a court trial and those have been filed by the public safety sector but not yet transferred to the court. The special cases are those pending cases which are concerned with the issues of the officials and the ordinary people, the haves and the have-nots and other social contradictions. Pending cases reports are not supported by concerned rules and policies but in the fact judges are unavoidable to deal with the media supervision on those special cases. Public opinions come into being more quickly than media opinions and develop into netizens’ speech supervision which is more difficult for judges to deal with than media supervision.The purpose of this research on judges’ attitude is to analyze the efficiency of public opinion supervision and to find if it could be controlled by the opening of justice. According to the case study on criminal cases of Zhangjinzhu, Dengyujiao, Hubin, etc, and the literature review, the thesis propose a hypothesis:those pending cases which are concerned with the issues of the officials and the ordinary people, the haves and the have-nots, are more easily to be paid attention on by the public opinion, and therefore trigger public events. When such pending cases happen, despite their highest principle is "based on the facts, judged by the laws ", the judges will easily surrender to the pressure from the public opinion, by sentencing to cater it. Under this situation, the public opinion is also easy to have influence on the judicature.By the survey on381judges, this article found that the preset study hypothesis could not totally explain how the public opinion supervises the judicature. This happens because the judges think the media and the public as different bodies of the public opinion, only when the public opinion has been combined with the media reports, the effects on the pending cases would be generated, and generally the judges would be influenced psychologically. The public opinion supervision could play its real role, whenever the administration pays attention on it and makes pushing.From the surveys, this article found the judges agreed on that the public opinion of the pending cases were caused by the present emerging social class contradictions and conflicts, but most of them had suspicion on whether the social contradictions could be relieved by releasing the information of the pending cases. On the one hand, the judges admit the situation of the power structural imbalance in China; on the other hand, they are not sure about whether the rights have effects on power balancing. The more important is that, the judge group question the public political literacy and democracy appealing, most of them prefer the media to the public opinion for supervision. The result of the survey demonstrates that, most of the judges require to broaden the media reports on the pending cases, while limit the public discussion on them to proper extension, since the former one could guide the public opinion, while the latter one could intensify the emerging social contradictions because of its irrationality. The mutual trust is lacked between the public and the judicature. It’s hard for the academic dream of balancing between the private rights and the public power to turn into reality.The social conflict theory points out, the social conflict could urge the ruler-makers to adjust the policies, which ensure the continuous development of the society in the processing of knowing and solving the contradictions. But this point of view is hardly to be admitted by the investigated judges. The judges are not certain about whether the political and democracy literacy of the public are qualified to supervise the judicature. Despite that there are more and more growing contradictions, most of the judges don’t think it possible for widening the public discussion over the pending cases to promote the policy adjustment.Starting from the judges’ recommendations, this article puts forwards the specific methods of lessening limits for the media to report the pending cases, that is the principal of reasonable doubt. Hence, it will be helpful to properly solve the special pending cases, whether it starts from promoting the public expression rights, or from balancing the judicature and the public opinion.The investigated judges generally think that the public doesn’t trust the judicature, at the same time, the survey also shows that the investigated judges doubt the reliability, rationality and social function of the internet user comments. When the social contradictions are emerging greatly, it is significant of intensifying the mutual trust between the private rights and the public power to avoid repeating of the similar group events. It’s more important for the judicature to buildup the mutual trust relationship, since it executes the jurisdiction on behalf of the public power. One of the main solutions is the open-up judicature. This article recommends to improve the system of the people’s jury, make the reliable people to enter the courtroom, by which it could help buildup the mutual trust between the judicature and the public, eliminate the social contradictions as well.In conclusion, this article holds that the real solution to balance the public opinion supervision and judicial independence, to solve the social contradictions is to construct the mutual trust between the Chinese judicature and the public, and to be confronted with the appealing of equality and justice by the public opinion.