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Jia Yu inspected Shanghai First and No.2 Intermediate Courts, saying they should take the initiative to play as a mainstay
[2023-02-27]

 

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Jia Yu inspected Shanghai First and No.2 Intermediate Courts, saying they should take the initiative to play as a mainstay

On February 22 and 23, 2023, Jia Yu, secretary of the Party Leadership Group and president of the Shanghai High People¡¯s Court, went to the Shanghai First and No.2 Intermediate People¡¯s Courts for an inspection. He learned about the practices the two courts had adopted in law enforcement and case handling, reform and innovation, team management, etc., and the problems they had encountered in those areas, and listened to their opinions and suggestions.

Following the first inspection of Shanghai¡¯s largest primary people¡¯s court and the most primary people¡¯s tribunal, this inspection was about the two intermediate people¡¯s courts. ¡°As the intermediate courts of a municipality directly under the Central Government, they play as a mainstay in the city¡¯s three-level court system by connecting the top and the bottom. The intermediate courts of Shanghai have been doing great in their work and have achieved great results in innovation. They should go all out to be the vanguard of reform, promote their advanced experience, set an example for other courts in the city, and blaze a trail for other courts across the country,¡± said Mr. Jia.

 

Grasping the key position of intermediate people¡¯s courts

On July 1, 1995, the former Shanghai Intermediate People¡¯s Court was transformed into the Shanghai First Intermediate People¡¯s Court and the Shanghai No. 2 Intermediate People¡¯s Court. Since then, the two courts have played an important role in handling major and difficult cases and performing key programs on judicial reform.

On the afternoon of February 22, 2023, Mr. Jia came to the Shanghai First Intermediate People¡¯s Court and inspected the corridor for promoting the culture of legal governance and the multi-functional area for officials and police officers to read, communicate and carry out activities. Mentioning those places in the seminar later, Mr. Jia said: ¡°They perfectly reflect the court¡¯s culture.¡±

As the court which accepts the most cases among the intermediate and high courts in Shanghai, the Shanghai First Intermediate People¡¯s Court also handles many major, difficult and complex cases and cases impacting a large number of people. During his inspection at the Information Management Center, Mr. Jia specially learned about the operation of both the court¡¯s special trial system and the platform dealing with information verification and issuance of money involved in cases for victims in cases impacting a large number of people.

According to Mr. Jia, the large number of major cases, important cases, and cases of new types handled by the court and the number of major criminal cases concluded by it in recent years indicate what a professional and competent team it has. The court should stick to the goal of taking a leading position in the city and even the whole country in terms of trial quality and efficiency.

Regarding the position of intermediate courts in the case quality supervision system, Mr. Jia emphasized their ¡°key position¡±: ¡°The intermediate courts take a key position of the case quality supervision system created by the city¡¯s courts, and between the second instance and the first instance, there is not just a difference in trial level; there is supervision and constraint. Therefore, the intermediate courts should engage themselves in the case quality supervision mechanism, proactively spot the problems in the cases in the second instance, and offer more guidance, thereby helping improve the capacity of the primary courts in their overall work and the quality of case-handling.¡±

 

Increasing productivity via technology: seizing the opportunity of digital development

On the morning of February 23, Mr. Jia came to the Shanghai No.2 Intermediate People¡¯s Court to inspect how it had been doing in building a smart court and in reform and innovation.

His first stop was the litigation service hall, which gathered a number of high technologies, including a smart cabin that provides self-serve litigation, a cloud platform for exchanging litigation materials, and an online service center. Mr. Jia watched the demonstration of how each technology is applied to case filing, asked about the performance of each part of the whole-process online case handling, and wondered if each innovation had been widely promoted.

Thanks to the reform of the trial recording method, the clerks had become resident in the courtroom, instead of in specific tribunals. Digital empowerment had helped release human resources. When Mr. Jia inspected the clerk management office, it was empty because the clerks had all gone out to the courtrooms, but their presence in the courtrooms was clearly displayed on the screen. Mr. Jia asked how many clerks the court had now and how they worked, and checked the accuracy of the speech-to-text conversion system. ¡°This is a good example of digital reform in the trial,¡± he said.

After inspecting the intelligent interactive applications in case filing and trial, Mr. Jia came to the smart execution research base to understand the application of the smart execution brain system and the trial management and inspection platform (TMI). On the other side of the base, there is the Smart Archive Digital Resource Center, where stands a glass cabin with a diameter of about 2.6 meters. It is a ¡°photomagnetic cabin¡± of electronic archive that integrates automatic burning, detection, and in-depth utilization.

¡°Whoever has the data grabs the opportunity.¡± At the seminar later, Mr. Jia specifically talked about the ¡°opportunity¡± for digital development. As a new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation is advancing by leaps and bounds, the world has entered the era of big science, with a rapid integration of science and technology and the economic and social development. Mr. Jia stressed that digital reform and empowerment shall decide if the courts of Shanghai would remain their leading position nationwide. ¡°Digitalization is the biggest variable of the productivity revolution, and it¡¯s also the biggest grasp and momentum for our reform and development.¡±

For the achievements that had been made by the courts of Shanghai, Mr. Jia said that the intermediate and high courts should do a good job in overall planning to avoid waste of resources, be more active in innovation, and keep exploring scientific and technological applications that meet their own conditions. ¡°Advanced experience should be widely promoted so that the outcome in one place shall be shared across the city,¡± said Mr. Jia.

 

The results of reform and development should ultimately be reflected in the feelings of the people

¡°What do we build smart courts for? Well, for one thing, we want to improve our efficiency. Digitalization has greatly changed productivity and relieved the burden of routine work. And for the other, which is more important, we want to make the people feel better about it.¡± At the end of the two inspections, Mr. Jia said: ¡°The results of reform and development should ultimately be reflected in the feelings of the people. It¡¯s all about if they actually do good to the people.¡±

At the corridor promoting the culture of legal governance in the First Intermediate Court, there was a scene carved on the wall of Ma Xiwu carrying a file to the grass-roots level. At the No.2 Intermediate Court, Mr. Jia inspected the Judge Qiao Studio, which was named after Qiao Beihua, a deputy to the 20th National Congress of the CPC and a model judge nationwide. He listened to Judge Qiao talking about the positive results the studio had achieved in diversified dispute resolution and litigation source governance. When he learned that the studio had a volunteer team mainly made up by judges and judge assistants, Mr. Jia said: ¡°This is a good platform. And you should work out a good mechanism to support such an excellent core team.¡±

Apart from inspection at specific sites, Mr. Jia also learned about the personnel, business, and management of the two intermediate courts at the seminar, and emphasized the importance of intermediate courts in the three-level court system. ¡°You should take the initiative, and be more active and more effective.¡± About the development of the intermediate courts, Mr. Jia mentioned the four points below:

First, the courts should be more proactive and effective in serving the overall interests. Based on their functional positioning, they should be active to integrate into the overall situation, and take the initiative to plan and get the job done. They should not only work around the CPC Shanghai Municipal Committee, but also offer assistance to the primary courts in the jurisdiction for better judicial services and guarantees.

Second, the courts should pursue greater quality and effectiveness in case handling. According to the pilot reform of the positioning of trial functions, intermediate courts are positioned to ¡°provide final trial in the second instance and end disputes¡±. They should try to discover and make high-quality cases, and make more benchmark judgments that can represent the level of Shanghai courts and are of demonstrative and guiding significance.

Third, the courts should set a good example in reform and innovation. Facing the new situation and new requirements of reform and development, the intermediate courts should take the lead across the board; based on a comprehensive review of the previous reform experience and achievements, implement the new requirements put forward in the report to the 20th National Congress of the CPC on the full and accurate implementation of the judicial accountability system; with the aim to handle properly the relationship between delegation and supervision, explore more sound mechanisms, and create more ¡°Shanghai experience¡± in such aspects as improving the mechanism for restricting and supervising judicial power.

Fourth, the courts should do a better job in team management. ¡°A good team naturally makes good performance, but without a good team, even if you still have a good performance, there is no way you can maintain your advantage.¡± Mr. Jia said that the intermediate courts handle various, specialized, and influential cases, and they enjoy obvious advantages in growing trial experts. So they should work with the primary courts in the jurisdiction to establish a base and platform for joint talent training, thereby creating a talent pool in Shanghai courts and promoting the modernization of courts.

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The English version of this article, which is translated from the Chinese version by CTPC, is for reference only and shall be subject to the corresponding contents on the Chinese webpage.
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