A Preliminary Study Of The Presiding Judge System In Chinese Court

Presiding Judge System refers to collectively the establishment of presiding judge and vice presiding judge as required by laws, the operation rules, and practices and conventions as well as accompanying conceptions that have formed under given historical conditions, though without written stipulations, but kept to a great extent by the court staff. This system is a key component of the court system.The title of "Presiding Judge" appeared firstly in the course of the campaign of rule modification and political reform in late Qing Dynasty, but officially established after the founding of the People's Republic of China; a court system with Chinese characteristics took shape gradually in a continuing integration of it with China's politics, economy, and local culture under specific historical conditions. Presiding judge, as a connecting organization within the court, is symbolized by its integrated power of administrative management and judicial trial.To separate the administrative management functions of court from its judicial functions is one of the directions of research and practice in recent judicial reform. The needs for the court to handle its internal affairs account mainly for the rationality of the establishment of the administrative management system; nevertheless, this internal system is very likely to encroach on and erode the judicial system, making the latter hard to keep its original nature. In long judicial practices, the presiding judge system has turned out to be one of the main channels for the administrative management thoughts and methods to make inroad on the trial system, and thereforeshould be regarded as an important object of research in judicial reforms.This article mainly studies the establishment, development, power and duties of presiding judges, and status quo of the presiding judge system, analyzes the historical and rational factors for its existence and its active role, points out existing problems of this system in current operation through a comparison between the vicissitudes of historical and practical conditions, and explores roads of reform, which is expected to be helpful for the construction of current judicial reform.