Text | Wang Siwei, President of the People's Court of Pujiang County, Zhejiang Province
"The construction of the rule of law should not only focus on the end and treat the disease, but also grasp the front end and treat the disease before it happens. This important exposition of General Secretary Xi Jinping shows that the construction of the rule of law at the grassroots level should not only focus on the "end" resolution of contradictions and disputes, but also focus on the "front-end" causes. As a "cost-effective" judicial service product that uses lower judicial costs in exchange for better governance effects, judicial suggestions provide new ideas and new directions for grassroots courts to solve the major topic of "reducing the increase in litigation from the source".
In recent years, the People's Court of Pujiang County, Zhejiang Province, has always adhered to the concept of "grasping the front end and curing the disease before it happens", adhered to and developed the "Fengqiao Experience" in the new era, deepened the active judiciary, actively integrated into the grassroots governance of society, and strived to consolidate the "large closed loop" of litigation source governance, actively extended judicial functions, and built a strong, orderly and effective closed-loop management mechanism for judicial suggestions.
In 2023, the Pujiang Court will send a total of 33 judicial recommendations, a year-on-year increase of 157%, the number of civil and commercial cases will decrease by 5.10% year-on-year, achieving a decrease for six consecutive years, and the number of administrative cases will decrease by 22.41% year-on-year.
Promote the improvement of the quality of judicial advice
The 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) made a major decision and deployment to "comprehensively promote the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation with Chinese-style modernization", and the modernization of judicial work is an important part of Chinese-style modernization. In the face of the new situation and new requirements, the key to making the concept of active justice permeate the entire process of adjudication work is to give full play to people's initiative.
The Pujiang People's Court has always adhered to the active judiciary as the greatest driving force, comprehensively strengthened the ideological guarantee, mechanism guarantee, and talent guarantee of judicial suggestion work, and took a dean's counseling class of "Strengthening Judicial Suggestion Work and Helping to Improve the Effectiveness of Social Governance" as a guide, put forward specific requirements for the formulation and issuance of judicial suggestions, and fired the "starting gun" for typical practice cases of "closed-loop management of judicial suggestions", and guided judges to change from simply handling cases to discovering problems. In order to activate the concept of judges' agency and strengthen the supervision and management of judicial recommendations, the Pujiang People's Court simultaneously refined the total amount of judicial recommendations, clarified that each judge should formulate and issue at least one judicial recommendation, revised the "Implementation Measures for the Performance Evaluation of Cadres and Police", and conducted management evaluations for department heads to perform "one post and two responsibilities", and beware of "hot at the top and cold at the bottom".
At the same time, the Pujiang People's Court issued a plan to improve the quality of judicial recommendations, introduced 10 systems around the whole process of formulating and issuing judicial recommendations, promoted the construction of a mechanism for court presidents and division presidents to lead key judicial recommendations, set up a team for tackling judicial recommendations in the four major fields of administration, enforcement, criminal, and civil and commercial affairs, built a lecture hall for young cadres and police, and invited senior judges of higher courts to give lectures on the writing of judicial recommendations and the discovery of problems for 3 times, so as to empower young judges and improve the quality of judicial recommendations. In 2023, the president of the Pujiang Court will write 18 judicial recommendations, accounting for 54.55%. Among them, 2 judicial suggestions were selected as the "Top Ten Excellent Judicial Suggestions of Jinhua Court in 2023".
Ensure the implementation of judicial recommendations
As the last line of defense for the resolution of contradictions and disputes, the courts are able to have a more comprehensive and in-depth understanding of the contradictions and disputes, and judges also have the ability to conduct in-depth analysis of the contradictions and disputes. Only by making good use of these two advantages, doing a good job in comparing similar cases, analyzing practical problems, making detailed policy recommendations, and aiming the focus of judicial suggestions at people's livelihood hotspots, social blockages, and governance difficulties, can we achieve the governance effect of "originating from cases and surpassing cases".
Based on the experience of "leading cadres carrying out petition work at the grassroots level", the Pujiang People's Court has coordinated and made good use of the two digital platforms of online "Petition Code Handling 2.0" and "Judicial Fairness Online" and offline "Public Sentiment Collection" activities to "take the pulse" and "prescribe" social problems. In 2023, the Pujiang Court will collect a total of 25 opinions. Keeping a close eye on areas such as the protection of minors, property management, and real estate supervision, which are of great concern to the public, court presidents and division presidents have strengthened the accuracy of individual case recommendations, deepened the representativeness of recommendations for similar cases, thoroughly studied departmental rules and industry rules, and sent high-quality judicial recommendations to more than 10 departments, including the Market Supervision Bureau and the Housing and Urban-Rural Development Bureau, to help social governance. In the trial of a series of cases in which a property company sued the owner for arrears of property fees, the Pujiang court sent judicial suggestions to the county housing and urban-rural development bureau in view of the problems of the property company's poor service quality and inadequate health and safety guarantees, which led to a 44.83% year-on-year decrease in disputes in such cases.
Open up channels for the transmission of judicial recommendations
Courts must adhere to the concept of "win-win, multi-win, and win-win" in formulating and issuing judicial recommendations, think and act in the overall situation, join hands with government departments and industry chambers of commerce, support and cooperate with each other, and "supervision is support, and support is supervision" throughout the entire process and all aspects of the formulation and issuance of judicial recommendations, so as to truly avoid "one shot" and "no use".
Through "internal and external" two-way efforts, the Pujiang Court has created a closed-loop management of judicial recommendations to ensure that the rectification of judicial recommendations is in place. Strengthen the supervision of progress internally, establish a system of "weekly report + monthly supervision + quarterly notification", the leaders of the court report on the formulation and feedback of judicial suggestions in each line at the regular meeting of the party group every week, and the comprehensive department supervises the completion of each department every month, and each department carries out a drying competition around the "judicial suggestion" track site every quarter. Strengthen rectification and supervision externally, promote the inclusion of judicial recommendation work in the "Pujiang County People's Congress Standing Committee Supervision of Judicial Organs Work Measures", take the initiative to report to the county people's congress standing committee on the formulation and issuance of judicial recommendations and feedback, and promote the improvement of the quality of judicial recommendations through the supervision of the people's congress platform, online comprehensive evaluation of the adoption and implementation of judicial recommendations, and units that do not actively implement rectification will be included in the year-end evaluation, through incentives and guidance, to promote the in-depth development of judicial recommendation work.
Expand the influence of judicial advice
The foundation of "data-assisted governance" is data, and the key lies in the analysis of data, and the foothold is social governance. Judicial recommendations themselves have a "mirror effect" of aggregating data and information and reflecting social conditions and public opinion. Turning data into recommendations is the process of using data analytics to continuously expand the impact of judicial advice.
The Pujiang People's Court deeply realized that "judicial recommendations are not one-time", made full use of the "one thing" circulation platform for judicial suggestions, and used multiple contact tracking methods such as "online + offline" and "reception + visit" to include the liaison officers of 53 administrative organs, enterprises and institutions in the county into the "two-way contact group for judicial suggestions", and carried out 28 return visits in 2023 through data analysis, special person notification, and return visit implementation, with the implementation rate of judicial recommendations reaching 100% and the feedback rate increasing to 96.15%.
In order to further play the role of judicial recommendations, the Pujiang People's Court has formed 56 judicial special reports and 7 research articles based on the data of a number of judicial recommendation elements, focusing on the universality, prominence and importance of contradictions in administrative adjudication and financial litigation source management, such as the report on the judicial disposal of immovable property related to industrial land , promote the auction and disposal of industrial land 5 cases, a total of 270 million yuan, involving an area of 170,000 square meters, and realize the tax payment of nearly 50 million yuan.
Although the road is far, the line is coming, and although it is difficult, it will be done. In the next step, the Pujiang Court will continue to deepen the governance of litigation sources, comprehensively improve the quality of judicial suggestions, leverage the "big governance" of grassroots society with the "small incision" of judicial suggestions, continue to make good use of the closed-loop management mechanism, and form a benign interaction of "construction" and "acceptance", so as to truly realize "handling one case, governing one area, and benefiting one party".
Cover and table of contents of this issue
China Trial, Issue 6, 2024
China Trial News Semi-Monthly No. 340
Editor/Xu Chang