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“Detaching” Courts from Local Politics? Assessing the Judicial Centralization Reforms in China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 July 2020

Yueduan Wang
Yueduan Wang*
Affiliation:
Harvard Law School. Email: ywang@sjd.law.harvard.edu.
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Abstract

The local party-state has always been a major source of extrajudicial influence in China. Drawing on interviews with judges, this article examines the impact of Xi Jinping's ambitious judicial centralization reforms, which are aimed at enhancing judicial autonomy by transferring authority over local court personnel and finances from local to provincial level. It finds that the reforms have achieved limited results. Although many appointment and budgetary powers were formally transferred to the provincial level, the local party-state retains considerable influence in both areas owing to its superior manpower, local knowledge and, in the case of developed regions, financial resources. Moreover, the local party-state maintains significant informal influence over the courts, which require many forms of discretionary assistance from various state organs – ranging from appropriating land for new courthouses to providing police protection for remote tribunals – in order to function. This setback highlights the depth and complexity of the courts’ political and economic embeddedness and serves as a reminder of the inherent difficulty of institutionalizing judicial autonomy, however limited, in a large and diverse party-state.

摘要

摘要

地方党政机关的不当干预向来被认为是困扰中国司法的一个严重问题。通过对各地法官的采访，本文试图检视当前政府所推行的司法机关人财物权上收改革是否有效减少了地方政治对司法的介入。从调研结论来看，这一改革只取得了较为有限的成果。虽然地方法院的人事权和财政权名义上都被上收到了省一级，但地方党政机关所拥有的人力、财力和地方性知识使其得以在相当程度上保留了在人事和财政上对司法机关的影响力。另外，由于地方法院在日常工作中仍然需要各个地方行政机构在土地规划、警力调度等方面的协助与配合，因此必须继续与地方政府保持一种非正式的联系。司法改革面临的这些困境体现了法院与地方政治、经济环境的紧密联系，并凸显了在中国这类超大型国家中将司法从政治中剥离的难度。

Keywords

judicial reformjudicial independencecentral–local relationsChinacentralizationembeddedness司法改革司法独立中央与地方关系中国中央集权嵌入性
Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 246 , June 2021 , pp. 545 - 564
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Copyright
Copyright © SOAS University of London, 2020

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