ABSTRACT
Much has been written about the Chinese court system.1 Chinese courts combine influences from continental systems transplanted from Germany and Japan to the People’s Republic of China (PRC or China) with requirements of party control and the imperatives of the unified state drawn from Chinese adaptations of Soviet policy and legal practice (itself influenced by the French civil tradition).2 The generally civilian character of the Chinese court system seems at odds with the pattern of seeking legal training for Chinese students, lawyers and judges in the common law systems of Canada, Britain and the United States. As well, Chinese law bookstores are heavily stocked with casebooks, which are frequently used in legal education and often prized by professors and practitioners alike, even if the courts are only recently coming to rely on case precedent to guide (albeit not control) their decisions. Much of the scholarly and policy analysis on China’s court system tends to focus on textual provisions of formal law and regulation and the operations of courts in the developed cities of China’s globalized coastal regions. While attention is gradually turning to courts and dispute resolution in rural areas,3 shortages of data and difficulties of access remain significant obstacles to understanding court behaviour in remote areas.
