Abstract as per original application
(English/Chinese): |
This study aims to analyze the performance of the Chinese judiciary in administrative ligation during the recent reform period, using a dataset of over 1.6 million judicial documents. The conventional understanding of the politics in China in the recent decade is its “turn against law.” In a preliminary study conducted by the PI, however, I find evidence that the judiciary in China has become increasingly significant in checking the power of the government. Courts accepted 79% more cases from 2014 to 2021, and plaintiffs’ win rate against the government has risen from 33.2% to 42.2%. This increase is even more pronounced in cases with strong impact on local government, such as those reviewing land expropriations and police penalties. Judicial authority has significantly improved, with chief government officials personally attending more than 50% of trials.
In this proposed research, I plan to study the causes of the rise of the Chinese judiciary. More specifically, I will study two policy reforms that may have contributed to the rise of judicial power, one regarding court funding, and the other on court’s jurisdiction arrangement. Exploiting a staggered roll-out reform that removed local governments’ fiscal control over local courts, I plan to study whether the independence of court finance improves courts’ ability to hold local governments accountable. Another reform changed jurisdiction rule in administrative litigation from intra-regional to trans-regional. I plan to study whether the trans-regional jurisdiction design increases plaintiffs’ win rate.
The proposed study will also explore the limitation of the judiciary. In previous interviews with judges, I found that Chinese courts still carefully distance themselves from reviewing the behavior of any Party organ and remain silent on citizens’ political rights. Judges are reluctant to conduct substantive reviews of government actions beyond procedure matters. In this proposed research, I will substantiate and test these hypotheses using more solid and comprehensive empirical evidence, i.e., data of millions of judicial documents.
In total, this proposed research plans to present a tripartite theory for understanding the rule of law in China, where the law and the judiciary are instrumental in routine and even hard cases, but their power rapidly wanes in the face of politics.
本研究旨在分析我国2014年至2020年司法改革中的行政诉讼。在初步研究中，我们使用了超过160万份司法文书数据，发现：法院在监督政府行政权力方面变得愈发重要。自2014年至2021年，法院受理的行政案件数量增加了79%，原告对政府的胜诉率从33.2%上升至42.2%。在对地方政府有重大影响的案件中，如涉及土地征收、公安机关行政处罚的案件，原告胜率的上升更为明显。司法权威也有着显著提升，行政机关负责人出席了超过50%的庭审。
在本研究中，我将探索和分析我国行政诉讼中，法院能力提升的原因。具体而言，我将研究两项政策改革，一项是法院的人财物统管，另一项是行政诉讼的集中管辖。利用人财物统管在各地不同时间点推出的特点，我将研究法院财政相对独立是否提高了法院监督地方政府的能力。同时，我也将研究行政诉讼集中管辖是否提高了原告的胜诉率。
本研究还将探讨法院能力的局限。在此前的访谈中，我发现法官较为倾向于对行政行为进行程序审查，而非实质审查。在本研究中，我将使用更为扎实的访谈资料和更为全面的数据（数百万份裁判文书数据），检验一系列相关理论假设。
根据研究的发现，我还将提出理解中国法治的相关理论。
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