Study On The Scope Of Application Of Civil Litigation Independence System

The sole-judge system is one of the organizational forms of civil litigation trial.The reasonable application of sole-judge system can bring into play its system value of realizing judicial benefit and safeguarding judicial justice.Under the situation of the increasingly prominent contradiction of "few judges and more cases" in the court,the simple civil case hearing by sole-judge system is an inevitable choice to realize judicial benefit on the premise of guaranteeing judicial justice.In China,in order to respond to the practical needs of judicial practice,the Measures for the Implementation of the Pilot Program of the Reform of Separation between Complicated Cases and Simple Ones in Civil Procedure and the Civil Procedure Law amended in 2021 have expanded the scope of application of the sole-judge system,which used to be only applicable to summary procedures,to ordinary procedures,and broken through the restriction of trial level.It has removed the binding of sole-judge system and summary procedure,greatly saved the judicial cost and improved the efficiency of litigation.But unfortunately,from the perspective of both norms and practice,there are still some problems in the application of the system at the present stage,such as fuzzy applicable standards stipulated by legislation,small scope of application,irregular transformation of judicial organizations,and lack of protection of procedural rights of parties.In this context,it is necessary to use standard analysis and empirical research methods,with the principle of procedural proportionality and protection of procedural rights as the theoretical basis,with the optimization of judicial resources allocation and protection of parties’ litigation rights as the basic guidance,the applicable scope of our sole-judge system of civil should be comprehensively investigated,and on the basis of problems found.The optimization of the application scope of the independent system is proposed.According to the research,we should improve the scope of application of the system from the following four aspects.First of all,the application criteria of the system should be clearly defined,and the three aspects of whether the case facts are simple,whether the law is clearly applied,and whether the value and interests involved behind the case are significant should be used to judge whether the system is applicable for trial.Secondly,the scope of application of the system should be appropriately expanded,allowing intermediate people’s courts to apply the sole-judge system to try some simple cases in first-instance procedures,and the simple appellate cases that are tried by the sole-judge system of ordinary procedure of first instance shall be brought into the scope of application of the system of second instance.Thirdly,we should perfect the transformation mechanism of judicial organization form,establish the two-way transformation mechanism between the collegial system and the sole-judge system,and clarify the specific rules of the two-way transformation of judicial organization form.Finally,we should fully respect the procedural subject status of the parties in the application process of the sole-judge system,appropriately grant the parties the right to choose the organizational form of trial by consent,and fully protect the rights of the parties to raise objections to the organizational form of trial.