8 - Local Courts in Western China

Summary

All justice emanates from the King. It is administered in his name by the justice whom he nominates, and whom he institutes.

– A constitutional adage in France until the 1830 Constitutional Charter

INTRODUCTION

In the north-central province of Shaanxi, as I was waiting to interview a judge, I noticed a small exercise book on his office desk. The same sort of notebook, brown and cheap, that Chinese children use for their homework. To start the conversation, I gently asked what he used the notebook for and was told that it was for his political homework assignments. The last page the judge had filled in was a handwritten copy of the Charter of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

As I decided to further explore the issue of grassroots judges' political culture in predominantly rural areas, I observed that although most of them share similar political and intellectual references, they do not have a strong common legal culture. For example, most of them believe that one-party rule is the key to stability, that party members are the elite of the country, that law's main goal is to be punitive, that the state constitution is purely ornamental, that judges are above all civil servants, and that the judiciary must be supervised by the people's congresses. Those recurrent political references reflect the judges' knowledge of the world. Put differently, their legal backgrounds appear highly politicized.