Courtroom setups in China's criminal trials

Abstract

Different courtroom setups embody different semiotic references and reflect different legal cultures. What the spatial setups of the court involve is not only the normal operation of the trial, but also to a large extent the mirroring of the corresponding judicial ideology. Although some studies on trial structures have been conducted by Chinese scholars, it is an uncharted domain in terms of the connection and relationship between courtroom setups and trial structures. To fill in such a gap, the study investigates the courtroom setups in criminal trials from a historical perspective with an aim to give an exact and vivid picture of the peculiar model of the trial structures encoded in the courtroom setups, and explore the rationales for such a model and the pitfalls in judicial practices. It then proposes a preliminary framework for the reform and perfection of the courtroom setups in criminal trials in China so as to adapt to the ideology of trial structure in modern China's criminal cases and also to provide implications for the further amendments of the Criminal Procedure Law of the People's Republic of China.