Excellent Judgments Selected by People's Courts (Shandong? 2002 Issue)

Author: Ding Yijun
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-11-01
Features: Preface
Judicial documents are important litigation documents of people's courts. They embody the creative labor of judges, serve as a concrete carrier of judicial fairness, and are an important standard for assessing judicial quality. Their value lies not only in punishing crimes, resolving and absorbing disputes, stabilizing social order, and enforcing and interpreting laws, but also because they condense the judicial system, especially the litigation procedure system, as well as various economic, political, and cultural factors that constitute the operating environment of the judicial system, making them a window into a country's judicial system and legal culture. In litigation practices across countries, the preparation of judicial documents holds a very important legal status. However, in China, due to the long-standing influence of the mindset that prioritizes substantive issues over procedural ones, coupled with constraints on judicial professionalism, the preparation of judicial documents once suffered from insufficient attention and low quality. The most prominent issues included inadequate legal analysis, non-standardized preparation, and imprecise wording, which to varying degrees weakened the judicial authority of people's courts and caused considerable negative impact both domestically and internationally. After China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO), the ability to promptly and effectively address the aforementioned issues in the face of principles such as non-discrimination, transparency, and judicial uniformity required by the WTO rules will not only affect the "window" image of Chinese courts but also more importantly, determine whether we can strictly fulfill our obligations under the WTO framework, thereby impacting China's international image and reputation.