Abstract
An adjudicative committee (AC) is a special statutory committee established in each Chinese court. This committee is special in the sense that it is not only responsible for judicial administration, but also empowered to decide individual cases. It is thus both an administrative and judicial body within the court. The adjudication function of this committee has aroused heated debate among scholars and practitioners and triggered a series of institutional reforms. Until now, however, the existing literature has offered little insight into the impacts of institutional reforms on judicial discretion within the AC proceedings. Discretion in this book is viewed in terms of decision-making; to be more precise, it is understood as the freedom to make decisions.
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- 1.
The AC is heavily influenced by the notion of maintaining Party control over adjudicative work from the former Soviet Union.
- 2.
The 1954 Organic Law was replaced by the 1979 Organic Law of the People’s Court. The 1979 Organic Law brought about only minor changes to the provisions of the AC, such as the introduction of democratic centralism as the working principle that governs the committee.
- 3.
Administrative procedure law is closely related to civil procedure law. Art. 3 of the 1982 Civil Procedure Law provides that the 1982 Civil Procedure Law applies to administrative procedures. Although the 1991 Civil Procedure Law does not have an equivalent clause, art. 97 of the 2000 SPC Interpretations on the Application of the Law of Administrative Procedure provides that the court may apply the administrative as well as civil procedure laws in administrative procedures.
- 4.
The Organic Law of the People’s Courts and the Criminal Procedure Law are different from the Civil and Administrative Procedure Laws. The latter two allow the Court President to decide whether it is necessary to refer a case to the AC for decision, even if he finds definite errors in the effective judgment.
- 5.
Pimentel called functional independence and accountability to be personal (subjective) or true independence and accountability (Pimentel 2009).
- 6.
The organizational choice theory is viewed as a simple extension of the individual decision theory (Feldman and March 1981, p. 172).
- 7.
He emphasizes that strong discretion does not mean that he is free to make decisions without recourse to any general standards, such as sense and fairness, “but only that his decision is not controlled by a standard furnished by the particular authority we have in mind when we raise the question of discretion” (Dworkin 1967, p. 34). This emphasis conciliates his seamless law system and strong discretion argument.
- 8.
Feldman points out three similar issues as the limits to the classic rational model, including the ability to process sufficient information, the existence of a unitary participant, and the specification of goals prior to making decisions. In addition, he recognizes the sequential order as the final limitation.
- 9.
Phenomenology is one of the two major theoretical perspectives which have dominated the social sciences. Compared to positivists, phenomenologists are committed to understanding social phenomena from the actor’s view rather than seeking the causes of social phenomena apart from the subjective states of individuals.
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Li, L. (2014). Introduction. In: Judicial Discretion within Adjudicative Committee Proceedings in China. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-54041-7_1
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