Chinese criminal trials: a comprehensive empirical inquiry

Abstract

In the past decade, research on Chinese criminal justice has witnessed a notable shift from broad–brush doctrinal overviews to fine–grained empirical studies using social science methods. With different research agendas, both criminal procedure law professors in China and social scientists overseas (mostly criminologists and socio–legal researchers) have begun to collect and analyze empirical data on various aspects of the criminal justice system. Ni He’s new book Chinese Criminal Trials is a recent product of this new trend. While many existing books on the Chinese criminal justice system focus on one specific aspect of it, such as policing, court trial, or criminal defense, He’s study provides a comprehensive examination of the system with both historical length and empirical breadth. The book opens with a short but ambitious overview of the historical context of Chinese criminal justice from antiquity to modernity. The author traces the legacy of the Chinese legal system and its institutional arrangements in Imperial China, such as the yamen and bureaucratic norms. Then he proceeds to analyze the socio–legal context of the contemporary Chinese criminal justice system in terms of the “tripartite rules” (pp.39–46), namely, rule of man, rule by law, and rule of law. These two parts are mainly based on the secondary literature on Chinese law, with occasional references to general social theorists such as Montesquieu, Parsons, Merton, and Inglehart in explaining the structural and cultural transformations of the so–called “Chinese legality” (pp. 10–14). The core empirical findings are reported in Part III, arguably the most exciting and valuable part of the book. The research is based on a pilot study in a southeast province of China during 2009–2011, funded by the MacArthur Foundation. The data consist of three components: (1) a survey of 642 legal professionals in the province, including 348 practicing attorneys, 177 criminal justice practitioners (i.e., those working in the police, procuracy, or court), and others working in the state or private sectors; (2)325 criminal trial observations; and, (3) 149 complete criminal case files. This excellent combination of complementary data sources provide the author a great opportunity to Crime Law Soc Change (2014) 62:87–89 DOI 10.1007/s10611-014-9521-y