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LI Xiao, ZHANG Jikun: Promotion of Judicial Protection of Human Rights with Modern Technology

——From the Perspective of the Construction of Intelligent Courts in China

2023-07-24 10:19·Forum on Global Human Rights Governance
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by LI Xiao, ZHANG Jikun

Promotion of Judicial Protection of Human Rights with Modern Technology

-From the Perspective of the Construction of Intelligent Courts in China

A new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation is on the upswing in today’s world; and the exponential growth of the Internet has created an unprecedented opportunity for the progress of human civilization. Chinese courts have always been adhering to Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era as the guide, thoroughly implementing Xi Jinping Thought on the Rule of Law and General Secretary Xi Jinping's important discourse on “Internet Power”, and sticking to the people - centered philosophy of the rule of law for human rights. With the goal of making the people feel fairness and justice in every judicial case, Chinese courts are actively responding to the call of the digital era, promoting the deep integration of modern technology and the court work, and are building a new judicial model in the digital era. Moreover, intelligent court information system has been put in place, offering the whole-process transparent and intelligent online services to the public in accordance with the law, which has effectively promoted the realization of fairness and justice, effectively protected the legitimate rights and interests of the people, and vigorously guaranteed the all-round development of human rights.

The new progress of Chinese courts in improving the level of judicial protection of human rights with modern technology in the digital era will be introduced from four aspects as follows.

I. Deep integration of modern technology with trial and execution has effectively guaranteed judicial justice, efficiency and authority.

The judiciary is the last line of defense to safeguard social fairness and justice, and a fair and efficient and authoritative socialist judicial system is an important guarantee for transformation of human rights on paper into human rights in reality. Chinese courts have been actively promoting the application of big data, artificial intelligence, blockchain and other modern technologies in trial and execution to help judges find facts and apply the law, so that fairness and justice can be better and faster realized.

of the in-depth application of digital case archives to realize the whole - process online case handling. Chinese courts have started to implement the synchronous generation and in - depth application of digital case archives along with the cases since 2016. In the whole process, judges conduct reviewing, marking, panel discussion, circulation, storage, filing and other work of the case archives based on digital case archives. Through the simultaneous generation of digital case archives along with the cases and the online circulation, various degrees of screening and sorting of complicated and simple cases and automatic returning and filling in of case archives information have been realized, effectively improving the trial efficiency. For instance, transfer of the files for cases on appeal, which used to take an average of 15 days, can now be completed in only several minutes.

2. Research and development of the intelligent trial supporting system to improve the intelligent trial level. Relying on judicial artificial intelligence and blockchain and other advanced technologies, knowledge services such as intelligent portraits of cases and accurate delivery of similar cases are provided for judges to trial and handle the cases, which has unified evidence, legal application and judgment standards, and provided a strong guarantee for a fair and authoritative judiciary. For instance, Opinions of the Supreme People’s Court on Strengthening Blockchain Application in the Judicial Field has been issued, and the “Unified Platform for Judicial Blockchain of People's Courts'” has been built, with which, difficulties in preserving, obtaining and corroborating evidences in lawsuits have been effectively solved. Meanwhile, intelligent auxiliary case-handling tools such as auxiliary document production and trial voice recognition and transcription tools have been developed. With them, the one-button generation of standard documents, such as various types of notifications, subpoenas, announcements and certificates of service, as well as the rapid generation of part of the contents of judgment documents, have been realized, which have reduced the routine work of judges by more than 30% and improved the trial efficiency by more than 20%.

3. Establishment of an information implementation work system to promote the construction of an honest society. Execution is a key part of the whole judicial process, which is related to whether the rights of the successful party can be fulfilled in a timely and effective manner. Chinese courts have persisted in building an information-based modern execution work system, established the online execution investigation and control system, and carried out online judicial auctions, which have effectively solved difficult problems of investigating people and finding things, and realizing the property. At present, Chinese courts has been connected to the Internet with more than 10 institutions, including the People's Bank of China and Ministry of Public Security of the People's Republic of China and more than 3,900 banks. They have set up an online investigation and control system covering courts and major property forms throughout the country has been established, so as to fully cover all forms of property. Moreover, a fundamental reform has been realized in the way property is investigated in accordance with the law. Meanwhile, the Supreme People's Court of China has strengthened the connection with the social credit investigation system, carried out joint punishment with more than 60 units including National Development and Reform Commission, and restricted persons subject to enforcement for trust-breaking from holding specific positions and from traveling, buying houses, investing, tendering and bidding. Therefore, persons subject to enforcement for trust-breaking will be restricted everywhere once they break their trust, which has promoted the construction of a social credit system.

4. Deepening of the application of judicial big data to promote the precision of court management. Chinese courts have established the big data management and service platform, which generates all the data automatically on the basis of the online office, and dynamically collect court case data throughout the country every 5 minutes, making it the largest trial information database in the world. Up to now, more than 900 special analysis reports have been completed based on the data from the platform, profoundly revealing the development law of conflicts and disputes behind the cases, and providing strong support and reference for judicial decision-making and modern social governance.

II. Through deep integration of modern technology and litigation services, judicial services within reach have been truly realized.

The fundamental purpose of governing the country by law is to protect the rights and interests of the people in accordance with the law. Chinese courts have been fully practicing the people - centered concept of human rights, actively building a one-stop diversified dispute resolution and litigation service system with Chinese characteristics, providing the people with intensive and integrated, online integrated and diversified judicial services, and comprehensively protecting the people's right to litigation.

1. A new online diversified dispute resolution pattern is actively built. Chinese courts give the main channel function of platform integration to full play, break down the information barriers between departments, regions and levels, build a “court+” online diversified dispute resolution system, widely gather people's mediation, industrial professional mediation, administrative mediation and other dispute resolution forces, and promote the establishment of a top-down and comprehensive “all-all” diversified dispute resolution mechanism to provide intensive and one - stop dispute resolution services of service menu scheme for the parties concerned. At present, Chinese courts have set up a one - stop diversified dispute settlement system with the largest number of interconnected resources, the most comprehensive online mediation and the widest range of services in the world, blazing a trail of justice with Chinese characteristics for the people. By September 2022, the Supreme People's Court of China had established the “all-all” online mediation mechanism with more than 10 institutions, including All-China Federation of Trade Unions and China Overseas Chinese Federation. Chinese courts at all four levels, more than 90,000 mediation organizations and more than 350,000 mediators have joined the platform to provide parties with online dispute resolution services. On average, tens of thousands of disputes were mediated on the platform every working day, and a large number of conflicts and disputes were prevented at the source and resolved before litigation.

2. 24-hour online litigation services have been comprehensively realized. The Supreme People's Court of China has built the platform of “Online Service platform for the People's Courts”, which has integrated more than 10 systems including online filing, electronic delivery and appraisal upon entrustment, and has been effectively connected to more than 3,500 courts across the country. The full coverage of online services to courts at all four levels has been realized, providing diversified, full-chain and one - stop online litigation services to the public, and sufficiently meeting the diversified judicial needs of the people. The people's litigations have changed from the originally time - consuming and laborious work to the full-process “hand-held handling”. The average time spent in online court hearings and the average trial cycles of cases are saved about 3/5 and 1/2 of that used in the traditional trial mode, respectively. The requirement of “non-stop trials and execution, and non-stop fairness and justice” was realized during the period of the COVID-19. Meanwhile, the online litigation service channels have been continuously enriched, and the litigation service hotline “12368” is opened to provide the public with the most convenient services for litigation matters by means of phone calls, and voice and text messages.

Big data statistics showed that compared with the traditional offline handling of cases, through information technology, Chinese courts ensured the litigants' right to litigation in an all-round way in 2021, reducing the travel of litigants, lawyers and other litigant participants and judicial officials by about 129.5 billion kilometers, equivalent to saving 6.36 million tons of standard coal and reducing of the carbon dioxide emissions by 12.98 million tons. Besides, paper consumption was reduced by more than 83,000 tons, equivalent to reducing the cutting down of 1.41 million trees. Green development is also promoted while protecting the litigants' right to litigation.

3. Modern technology is deeply integrated with judicial openness for all-round development of a transparent and sunshine judicial mechanism.

Judicial openness is the inevitable requirement to protect the people's right to know, to participate, to express and to supervise. Fairness and justice shall be realized in a way visible to the people. Public trial is a basic principle of Chinese justice. All cases shall be heard in public, except those involving state secrets, individual privacy, crimes committed by minors, or those involving commercial secrets proposed by the parties concerned. Even if the law stipulates that the trial should not be held in public, public sentencing is also required.

In recent years, the judicial openness of Chinese courts based on the construction of intelligent courts has reached unprecedented breadth and depth, covering various fields and links of the work of courts. The level of standardization, institutionalization and informatization has been significantly improved, and all-round judicial openness has been basically realized. Four major information platforms of openness of trial procedures, openness of trial activities, openness of judgment documents, and disclosure of execution information have been fully established and under operation; and an open, dynamic, transparent and convenient sunshine judicial mechanism has basically taken shape. Open and transparent online judicial auctions in the whole process have been widely promoted. All auction behaviors such as the announcements, payment of deposits, bidding, and successful transaction confirmation in traditional auction procedures are carried out on the Internet auction platform. The successful transaction rate and the premium rate have increased several times over; and the unsuccessful auction rate and the auction cost have reduced significantly. By September 2022, transaction volume of online auctions by courts all over the country had yielded more than RMB 2 trillion, saving commissions of more than RMB 60 billion for parties involved.

In order to give full play to the effect brought by the deep integration of modern technology and judicial openness and effectively enhance sense of judicial access of the people, the Supreme People's Court of the People's Republic of China has also developed the “Faxin” Platform, an intelligent trial assistance system. It collects legal data resources and provides accurate resource retrieval and intelligent promotion services for the public, lawyers and other professionals as well as judicial personnel.

4. Active innovation in the Internet system of judicial rules to strive to promote the development of litigation system

While relying on modern technology to reshape the traditional offline trial mode and litigation procedures, Chinese courts are attaching importance to the construction and improvement of the Internet system of judicial rules, and promote Chinese intelligent courts to move from technology leadership to rule-based leadership.

China has set up three Internet courts in Hangzhou, Beijing and Guangzhou successively since 2017, and taken the lead in exploring the mechanism of “online trial of Internet cases”. Based on comprehensive summary of the experience of Internet courts, China has gradually promoting the online trial mode in courts across the country, and realized the online completion of the whole process of lawsuit filing, trial, service and execution. In order to guarantee the orderly development of the online judicial model, Chinese courts have constantly improved the norms of Internet judicial procedures. Since 2021, the Supreme People's Court of the People's Republic of China has promulgated Rules of Online Litigation of People's Courts, Rules for the Online Operations of the People's Courts and Rules for the Online Operations of the People's Courts in the form of judicial interpretation. Therefore, a rule system with clear division of labor, orderly connection, effective coverage of all the fields of judicial activities and throughout the whole process of the trial and execution has been established, making various kinds of online judicial activities regulated, legal, and standardized. The Internet system of judicial rules with Chinese characteristics is basically established. At the end of 2021, China amended Civil Procedure Law of the People's Republic of China, in which, the results of online justice of the people's courts are extensively incorporated and the legal effect of online litigation is clarified, vigorously promoting the leaping development of litigation legal system in the information era.

In a word, Chinese courts have been using modern scientific and technological means to empower justice, safeguard justice, facilitate litigation and promote openness, and have been striving to build a new judicial model in the digital era, which has contributed to comprehensive improvement of the judicial protection of human rights.

In October 2022, the Communist Party of China held its 20th National Congress and set the goals, tasks and fundamental policies for the development of the Party and the country in the next five years and beyond. Besides, a special deployment was made to adhere to the comprehensive rule of law and promote the construction of a China under the rule of law; and clear requirements were raised on accelerating the construction of a cyber powerhouse, a digital China, and a new generation of information technology, artificial intelligence and other new growth engines. At the 17th G20 summits in November 2022, General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out that we should adhere to multilateralism, strengthen international cooperation, give continued priority to development, bridge the digital divide, and make the results of digital economic development benefit people from all over the world. Guided by Xi Jinping's socialist thought with Chinese characteristics in the new era, Chinese courts will thoroughly study and implement the spirit of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, adhere to equality and mutual benefit, upheld the concepts of fairness, justice, openness and inclusiveness, put true multilateralism into practice, and conduct in-depth exchanges and cooperation with other developing countries on digital rule of law. Moreover, Chinese courts will actively share their experience in establishing an intelligent court information system and improving the working mode of trial and execution, and work together to promote the deep integration of modern technology and the court work, strive to better safeguard international fairness and justice, promote the development of the global human rights cause, and build a community with a shared future for mankind.

(The author Li Xiao is first-level inspector of the Supreme People's Court of the People's Republic of China, senior judge, executive member of China Society for Human Rights Studies, Secretary-general of Chinese Judicial Studies Association; Zhang Jikun is senior judge of Beijing Chaoyang District People's Court)

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