Procedural Justice and the Fair Trial in Contemporary Chinese Criminal Justice: (Brill Research Perspectives in Governance and Public Policy in China)

This review examines the literature on procedural justice and the fair trial over the past two decades in the People’s Republic of China. Part 1 gives a wide-angle view of the key political events and developments that have shaped the experience of procedural justice and the fair trial in contemporary China. It provides a storyline that explains the political environment in which these concepts have developed over time. Part 2 examines how scholars understand the legal structures of the criminal process in relation to China’s political culture. Part 3 presents scholarly views on three enduring problems relating to the fair trial: a presumption of innocence, interrogational torture, and the role of lawyers in the criminal trial process. Procedural justice is a particularly pertinent issue today in China, because Xi Jinping’s yifa zhiguo 依法治国 (governing the nation in accordance with the law) governance platform seeks to embed a greater appreciation for procedural justice in criminal justice decision-making, to correct a politico-legal tradition overwhelmingly focused on substantive justice. Overall, the literature reviewed in this article points to the serious limitations in overcoming the politico-legal barriers to justice reforms that remain intact in the system, despite nearly four decades of constant reform.

About the Author :
Elisa Nesossi is an Australian Research Council Early Career Research Fellow at the Australian Centre on China in the World (Australian National University). Her research interests include: contemporary Chinese law, Chinese criminal justice, human rights in China, Chinese legal history, comparative human rights law and comparative criminal justice. She is the author of China Pre-Trial Justice. Criminal Justice, Human Rights and Legal Reforms in Contemporary China (Wildy, Simmonds & Hill Publishing, 2012). Her co-edited volumes include The Politics of Law and Stability in China (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2014), Legal Reforms and Deprivation of Liberty in Contemporary China (Routledge, 2016) and Justice: The China Experience (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Susan Trevaskes is Professor of Chinese Studies in the School of Humanities, Languages and Social Sciences at Griffith University, Australia. Her China-related research interests include criminal courts, policing serious crime, the death penalty, justice and the political nature of criminal justice in China. She has published sole-authored books in the area of Chinese criminal justice studies: Courts and Criminal Justice in Contemporary China (Lexington Press, 2007), Policing Serious Crime in China: from 'strike hard' to 'kill fewer' (Routledge, 2010) and The Death Penalty in Contemporary China (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). Her co-edited volumes include The Politics of Law and Stability in China (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2014), Legal Reforms and Deprivation of Liberty in Contemporary China (Routledge, 2016) and Justice: The China Experience (Cambridge University Press, 2017).