Judicial Officials Consider Uniform Rules for Court Responses to Citizen Petitions

The Supreme People's Court (SPC) currently is researching the adoption of a uniform set of rules to govern how courts respond to citizen petitions following court decisions, according to a July 25 Legal Daily article (in Chinese) posted on the Procuratorate Daily Web site. SPC officials announced at a November 2005 conference that they would require all Chinese courts to establish such rules, and courts in Anhui, Guizhou, Hainan, Hubei, and Henan provinces and Chongqing municipality have already done so, according to the Legal Daily article. Guangdong provincial officials announced in July that Guangdong courts at all levels would also implement such rules, according to a July 20 Xinhua article.

Judges generally have the responsibility under such rules for handling the in-person visits of petitioners who want to complain about court decisions. The 2005 SPC announcement said that a trial judge's record of handling such complaints will be made part of their regular performance review along with their record of handling trials. The Guangdong rules will require presiding judges who issue decisions to meet with dissatisfied parties, address their complaints, and convince them that the original decision was valid. A June 21 report posted on the SPC's Web site noted that the rules adopted by the Bazhong Intermediate People's Court in Sichuan province require the docketing tribunal to organize the court's responses to parties who complain regarding the "facts, reasons, use of law, and determination of responsibility" of final court decisions. Docketing judges must notify the presiding judge who issued the decision to meet with dissatisfied parties and convince the complaining parties that the decision is valid. Judicial authorities at higher levels also may participate in resolving citizen complaints, and docketing judges may arrange additional meetings if dissatisfied parties continue to file petitions.

Compelling judges to handle post-verdict citizen petitions is part of a comprehensive government effort to reduce the number of citizen petitions. The SPC's announcement that it would require courts to adopt rules for responding to such petitions parallel aspects of the new 2005 Regulations on Letters and Visits. The announcement also followed a Ministry of Public Security-managed national campaign during mid-2005 that sought to reduce the number of citizen petitions nationwide. Guangdong provincial court officials announced their measures to respond to post-decision petitions at a conference on xinfang (letters and visits) work. Both the Xinhua article and the SPC press release link the Guangdong and Bazhong measures to efforts to reduce the number of litigation-related petitions. For more on the Chinese xinfang system, see Section V(e), on Access to Justice, of the Commission's 2005 Annual Report.

Some commentators have criticized these rules. A July 21 post on the Rule of Law Forum pointed out that requiring judges to receive petitioners and respond to their complaints after they have issued a decision creates three problems for the authority and independence of the judiciary. First, the requirement that judges issue additional explanations for their decisions undermines the authority and weight of the original decisions. Second, requiring judges to explain their verdicts in more detail creates a pretext for dissatisfied parties to challenge the verdicts and raises the costs of litigation by allowing parties alternative channels to repeatedly appeal decisions that they disagree with. Third, these rules undermine judicial impartiality by compelling judges to personally resolve an individual party's dissatisfaction with a verdict.

The SPC rejects such criticism of systems requiring judges to respond to post-decision petitions. An unnamed official of the SPC's docketing tribunal noted in a February 13 Legal Daily article that, "whether out of concern for social stability or concern for individual parties, judges cannot fail to pay attention to these matters, and must conduct legal propaganda and education to convince [petitioners] to abide by the verdict and halt their complaints." He rejected concerns that such efforts would harm judicial efficiency, saying that those who "only care about efficiency and deciding cases, and don't care about the quality or the effects of their decisions" are failing to abide by the "scientific concept of development" of Chinese courts. SPC Vice President Cao Jianming called on courts in a January 5 speech on the "scientific concept of development" to "fully recognize the serious situation posed by litigation-related petitions that remain high in number without going down" and implement rules requiring judges to respond to them as a means for addressing such petitions.