The Research On The People's Jury System In China

The Chinese jury system has undergone various reformations and several amendments throughout the history,which has perfectly ensured judicial democracy,transparency and justice.With the constant deepening of judicial reform,however,the current jury system failed to satisfy the demand of judicial practice.Consequently,many inherent flaws of the existing system emerged—The selection mechanism of jurors remains unsound,the scope of the cases adopting jury stays unclear;The rights of jurors are not well-protected,the performance of them is not efficiently assessed and any misconduct is not properly punished.As a result of all the problem mentioned above,most jurors aren't selected on a fair and democratic basis.What's worse,once selected,many stay in the posts permanently.In order to eliminate the age-old drawbacks and ultimately build a sound jury system,People's Jury Law of PRC was officially issued and implemented on April 27 th 2018.Ever since then,the mechanisms of “one rise,one fall” and “three randoms” are applied when selecting jurors.The trail of fact is also separated from the trail of law in colligate bench.This study aim to picture the implementing situation of the law,testify whether the expectations of the law-makers are fulfilled,identify and then discuss some theoretical disputes over the existing system.Empirical investigation is the main writing method in this paper.Hence,182 valid questionnaires were distributed and collected,a symposium on relevant issues was held.Via research,a bunch of problems were unmasked—failure to give full play to the rights of jurors,disputes between fact trial and law trial,an awful number of jury procedures were initiated without the request of litigant.In order to tackle all the revealed problems,improvements should be made in several aspects.Initially,the selection system of jurors should be improved---the personnel responsible for the jurors election and qualification examination should be clearly defined.Secondly,a sound and complete management mechanism should be established,including on-job training,performance assessment and punishment system.Thirdly,the rights of jurors shouldbe guaranteed and protected by the enhancement of their safety,the provision of funds and the settlement of conflicts between operation and supervision.Forth,the trail of fact and the trail of law should be specifically defined.Jurors should perform their duties under the lead of judges.This thesis consists of five parts as follows,The first part centers on the evolution of legislation and the revolution of system with a brief retrospect of how the jury system has been developing throughout the history.Not only the significance of People's Jury Law of PRC,but all the relevant methods to ensure peoples' participation in judicial system,initiatives to broaden the scope of election and measures to innovate the election method were evaluated in this part.The theoretical basis of the jury system is the main theme of part two.The function of the system is studied and discussed,the essence of judicial democracy and judicial equality is thoroughly analyzed—public representation,power restriction,jury independence,judicial supervision and integrity included.In part three,an investigation about the status quo of the Jury System is conducted.Based on analysis of all the data collected from questionnaires,symposium and interview of the court in S district,Zhejiang Province,this study revealed that the root factor resulting in the current problem is a combination of several issues.For instance,the mass lacks the knowledge of the definition and function of jurors,the dispute over the trail of law and the trail of fact still remains.Plus,the rights of jurors are not given full play to in practice and too many jury process without the request of litigants were initiated.On the top of that,solutions to solve the pointed questions are also included in this part.In part 4,this study investigate and draw on the inspiring experience of the jury systems in the other countries.With a detailed description of the systems in different nations and a comparison between the domestic and foreign system,the use for reference of their system is discussed.A system of Exemption and peremptory challenge should be built.The methods to improve the exiting jury system is discussed in part 5.Both thestatus quo and prospect of the system is well studied.The mechanism to elect,train,evaluate jurors is also profoundly analyzed.Hence,a number of measure to better the Chinese jury system are proposed and all of them can cater to the national conditions perfectly.