ABSTRACT
The local district court is situated in a large city in southern China. It has about 350 staff members and handles about 50 000 cases a year, 20 000 of which are commercial disputes. The court has three departments handling each stage of the case from lodging a complaint through hearing the case to executing decisions of the court. For the hearing, judgement can be delivered by one judge if the case is minor, or by one judge consulting with two lay assessors when the case is complicated. Any judgement delivered by a judge has to be approved by the head of the court, sitting separately. Recently, to fight against corruption in the legal profession, the court added an additional department to supervise its staff and has changed its practice from allowing one judge to handle a case in its entirety to a system under which a case is handled by several judges from different departments. Apart from the campaign to fight against corruption, the court has also started to strengthen the execution of its judgements. Nevertheless, in the year 2000, according to one court official, only half of the judgements were successfully enforced.
