The Importance Of Procedural Justice

One of the elements of rule of law is procedural justice. As mentioned by Heidi Burgess and Sarah Cast (2013), procedural justice guarantees impartial outcomes from court. It makes people accept and respect the result even they don not like it as Pornpimol Kanchanalak(2012) points out, it brings about consistency, predictability and calculability. Although China has been trying to give a fairer hearing than the past, when emperors had the arbitrary power to control justice without lawful judgment, there have been cases that failed to uphold procedural justice. For instance, according to the researching result from Mike McConville (2010), final decision of the court is mainly made by judicial department and communist party instead of the

Indeed, for the sake of maintaining their social statuses, yearly commissions and relationships with government officials, many prosecutors in China decline to uphold procedural justice but choose to cooperate with those who have the arbitrary power. In truth, advocating procedural justice is to minimize the arbitrary government power and its impact to individual liberty. Many other western countries such as the United Kingdom, are relatively more successful in performing procedural justice. It is believed that endorsing procedural justice in the UK favors the cooperation between people and police and raising the legitimacy of police (Levin, Paul, Alistar and PC Andy, 2013). Indeed, procedural justice is not only essential for police and people but also can be applied in prisons. As stated by Jonathan, Tyler and Ben(2010), it is to ensure the rights and protection of inmates in four areas: “ voice, neutrality, treatment with respect and dignity” . In these four area, neutrality refers to judging a person base on proper procedure other than personal opinions. Thus, with improper procedure, the accused could not be called guilty even there is the presence of

With no doubt, China has been adopting separation of powers under the influence of the western legal systems such that as stated in Article 126 of the Constitution of The People’s Republic of China, “the people’s court exercises judicial power independently, in accordance with the provisions of the law, and are not subject to interference by any administrative organ, public organization or individual.” It clearly shows the determination of the Chinese government in upholding a sound legal system by providing efficient separation of power, yet, the article has not been enforced effectively. While the statement has shown its determination, each level of the courts is still accountable to local political power of the same level. For instance, lower levels of the court structure are accountable to high level ones. At the same time, judges in China mostly belong to certain political parties and thus, it is not easy to insure they are not affected by their parties and the parties’ ideology when making judgment. In point of fact that even when a judge has no any political background, his judgment could still be influenced since presidents of the courts have the rights to not only monitor hearings but also guide the judges in making decisions. The arbitrary power does not cease at the president level as the National People’s Conference also has the authority to pass laws and