Professor Tian He and Professor Lu Yanbin Put forward Suggestions on Judicial Openness at a Symposium Organized by the Supreme People’s Court

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On February 27, 2018, the Symposium on Judicial Openness of People’s Courts, organized by the Supreme People’s Court, was held in Beijing. The symposium was attended by legal scholars, experts from legal technology companies, persons in charge of judicial openness work in local people’s courts, and judges from the Supreme People’s Court. At the symposium, the participants summarized the development process, the experience and achievements of the judicial openness work carried out by people’s courts at various levels during the past five years and carried out in-depth discussion on the question of how to further deepen judicial openness, strengthen the exploration and utilization of data, and raising the level of disclosure of judicial openness and court informatization. Two scholars from CASS Law Institute attended the symposium: Professor Tian He, Editor-in-Chief of the Blue Book on the Rule of Law in China and Head of the CASS Center for the Study of National Index of the Rule of Law, and Professor Lu Yanbin, Executive Editor-in-Chief of the Blue Book on the Rule of Law in China and Head of the Department of Survey and Investigation of National Situation of the Rule of Law. In her speech, Professor Tian He put forward the following suggestions: first, to further upgrade the idea of judicial openness, adhere to the guiding ideology of “disclosure as a rule and non-disclosure as an exception”, timely disclose court information to the public through the platform for the disclosure of information about trial process and various other channels, and build the platform for the disclosure of information about trial process into an “open, dynamic, transparent and convenient” platform; second, correctly handle the relationship between uniform standard on judicial openness and the initiatives of local courts. The website for the disclosure of judicial information is a unified platform for the disclosure of judicial information by all people’s courts in the country. Local people’s courts at various levels must disclose their information in accordance with a uniform standard. Professor Lu Yanbin pointed out in his speech that the further deepening of judicial openness must be supported by corresponding institutions, mechanisms and technologies. Firstly, China must strengthen legislative guarantee of judicial openness; secondly, China must strengthen the relevant mechanisms for judicial openness. Each court must make a list of information to be disclosed and improve the operability of openness; and thirdly, China must strengthen technological guarantee of judicial openness.