Abstract
This article reviews how Chinese scholars debate the policy of building smart courts in the context of judicial reform. This policy entails the automation and digitisation of judicial processes. It is part of broader judicial reforms that aim to create a more accurate and consistent judiciary. The article identifies four reform concepts that guide the debate: efficiency, consistency, transparency and supervision, and judicial fairness. This review is a meta-synthesis, using practices of narrative and systematic literature reviews, focusing on evaluating and interpreting the Chinese scholarship and reform concepts. It reviews how Chinese scholars discuss the implications of judicial automation and digitisation. Additionally, it analyses the normative concepts behind the reform goals within China’s political-legal context. The analysis finds that the generally positive evaluation in the debate can be explained by an instrumentalist understanding of the reform concepts and the political purpose of courts in the Chinese political-legal context.
Highlights
For the past two decades, Chinese courts have integrated information technology (IT) in the judicial process, officially called judicial informatisation (司法信息化, sifa xinxihua) (Liu and Wu, 2021)
China’s judiciary has accelerated the mass digitisation of its procedures and archives of court judgements (Ahl and Sprick, 2018). It has introduced live broadcasting and online video depositories of trial hearings (Fan and Lee, 2019). These reforms constitute the foundation for what is officially called the policy of building smart courts (建设智慧法院, jianshe zhihui fayuan)
It entails creating a judicial decision-making process, supported by algorithms and big data analytics, conducted in an online judicial ecosystem where most tasks are automated, and judges are aided by technology to make more accurate, consistent, and transparent decisions
Summary
For the past two decades, Chinese courts have integrated information technology (IT) in the judicial process, officially called judicial informatisation (司法信息化, sifa xinxihua) (Liu and Wu, 2021). This review may help other disciplines, such as socio-legal studies and law and technology studies, that are interested in how normative concepts regarding judicial fairness and consistency of adjudication influence the debate on automation and digitisation of justice. By digitising the entire judicial process and the automation of tasks, smart courts are intended to improve both substantive and procedural consistency. The 2017 SPC Opinion clarifies that it envisions technology as a tool to improve internal supervision to better monitor and restrict the exercise of judicial power This should, in turn, induce a more uniform application of law and ensure more substantive and procedural consistency (section V.16). “Organically unifying” (有机统一, youji tongyi) is an often-u sed policy-term that refers to promoting a particular way of thinking that binds together “what might otherwise be read as dissonant concepts or statements” (Lin and Trevaskes, 2019: 51)
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