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Criminal cases in China may be adjudicated by a judge, or they may be adjudicated by a mixed panel of professional judges and lay judges. These lay judges are referred to as lay assessors or people’s assessors.
Wan E'xiang, the Vice President of the Supreme People’s Court of the People’s Republic of China, recently briefly described the lay assessor system in a speech to the Organization of American States.
(click to watch)
Currently lay assessors are appointed for a period of three years by the people’s congresses, and are given status equal to the professional judges. They are involved in determining the facts, applying the law to the facts, and in making sentencing decisions. Article 10 of the Organic Law of People’s Courts of the People’s Republic of China establishes the use of mixed judging panels:
Article 10. The people's courts adopt the collegial system in the administration of justice. Cases of first instance in the people's courts shall be tried by a collegial panel of judges or of judges and people's assessors; simple civil cases, minor criminal cases and cases otherwise provided for by law may be tried by a single judge. (Revised on September 2, 1983)
Appealed or protested cases in the people's courts are handled by a collegial panel of judges.
The president of the court or the chief judge of a division appoints one of the judges to act as the presiding judge of the collegial panel. When the president of the court or the chief judge of a division participates in the judicial proceedings, he acts as the presiding judge.
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In September of 2007, Xiao Yang, the President of the Supreme People's Court, announced that the Court is going to issue a new regulation calling for the random selection of lay assessors. This is major change for the Chinese justice system, and it is hoped that the new regulation will improve the fairness of the process and prevent nepotism and unfair personal influence in the selection of “people’s jurors.”
The People’s Daily reports that between May of 2005 and June of 2007, there were 55,681 lay assessors that served in 644,723 cases.
In October of 2007 the 30th Session of the Standing Committee of the Tenth National People’s Congress of the People’s Republic of China adopted a number of amendments to the Lawyer’s Law. These amendments are scheduled to go into effect in June of 2008. International Bridges to Justice (IBJ) has been kind enough to provide us with an unofficial translation of the amendments. Changes have been noted in red. For additional information on IBJ, please visit www.ibj.org.
The amendments appear to increase an attorney’s access to a client in custody, however, they conflict with provisions of China’s criminal procedure law and therefore may not go fully into
effect without further legislative action.
October 2007 Amendments to Law on Lawyers of PRC
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