Report on
judicial transparency released
Trial
procedures in China are becoming more and more transparent, according to a
report on "judicial transparency of courts" released on Dec 10.
This
is the first time the Supreme People's Court has entrusted the assessment on
judicial transparency to a third party.
A
third party agency analyzed the judicial and public information through the
website and the internal data of the courts and reviewed the files of 128
courts -- 32 high people's courts, 32 intermediate ones and 64 at the
grass-roots level.
Li
Liang, director of the SPC's judicial management department, explained that the
report reviews three aspects of judicial transparency -- trial procedure
information, judgment document publicity and live streaming of trials. The
assessment of the last part was released in August.
The
report concluded that the judicial information publicity platform -- China
Judgment Online (http://wenshu.court.gov.cn/) -- launched by the SPC had set a
unified information publishing standard and made it easier for the public to
search judicial information and obtain litigation and other procedures.
Publicizing
information of trial procedures can increase public comfort with litigation,
decreasing misunderstandings and suspicions and pushing courts to handle cases
fairly and normatively in accordance with the law.
According
to the report, in February this year courts in Hebei,
Qinghai and Jiangsu provinces and the Ningxia Hui
autonomous region started to release information of judicial procedures through
various platforms including China Judgment Online, 12368 Messaging, WeChat account and WeChat mini
programs.
Courts
in a total of 31 provicial regions began publishing
trial information of newly accepted cases on China Judgment Online on Sept 1
this year.
In
addition, most judicial documents have been publicized in a timely manner. The
number of documents under examination was 523,939, 19.96 percent of which were
uploaded within 30 days of approval;331 documents were
uploaded on the day they were issued.
The
report also mentioned problems of judicial publicity. For instance, some
information is inaccurate and needless.
Li
stressed the assessment was intended to find problems of judicial transparency
and make improvements to push forward judicial reform.