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From “Access to Justice” to “Barrier to Justice”? An Empirical Examination of Chinese Court-Annexed Mediation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 July 2016

Yedan LI
Yedan LI*
Affiliation:
Faculty of Sociology, Bielefeld University, Germany
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Abstract

The literature on Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) has argued for the general advantages of courts’ providing mediation services. However, courts’ involvement in mediation cannot always be justified by those advantages, unless (1) the mediation process is a consensual procedure based on party autonomy and (2) where the initiation is mandatory, the courts’ allocation of cases is justified both by the public interest and a case selection system. In this context, this article empirically tests whether the established arguments from ADR theory can be applied to justify all Chinese court-annexed mediation practices. This study provides a negative answer, owing to the fact that some Chinese court-annexed mediation practices found in the fieldwork aim mainly at clearing dockets and achieving case management for the courts’ organizational interests. Offsetting the advantages, those Chinese court-annexed mediation practices prevent disputants from gaining access to the official adjudication procedure.

Keywords

ADRcourt-annexed mediationChinese case-filing mediationChinese court
Type
Research Article
Information
Asian Journal of Law and Society , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , November 2016 , pp. 377 - 397
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press and KoGuan Law School, Shanghai Jiao Tong University 

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Footnotes

*

Yedan Li is a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Faculty of Sociology of Bielefeld University. She received her PhD in law at the University of Amsterdam in 2015. An earlier version of this paper was published at the Call-for-Paper session, “Research in Progress on East Asian Law and Society,” organized by the Section on East Asian Law and Society (EALS Section) of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) on January 10, 2016 at the 2016 AALS Annual Meeting in New York. The author is grateful to Professor Setsuo Miyazawa, the 2015 Chair of the EALS Section, Professor Robert Leflar, Chair of the Selection Committee, and Professors Donald Clarke, Eric Feldman, and Rachel Stern for their helpful comments. An early version of this paper was also presented at the European China Law Studies Association (ECLS) conference held in Cologne in 2015, and it benefited from the discussions there. The author appreciates editorial assistance from the journal’s executive office as well. Last but not the least, the author thanks the Chinese judges who kindly arranged the fieldwork for the study. Correspondence to Yedan Li, Faculty of Sociology, Bielefeld University, Universitatsstrasse 25, 33615 Bielefeld, Germany. E-mail address: [email protected].

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