In order to cope with the unprecedented wave of citizens' law suits against officials and government agencies, the Supreme People's Court (SPC) has introduced two new judicial practices.

According to SPC Chief Justice Xiao Yang, between 2000 and 2006, courts nationwide handled 639,736 administrative trials (those in which the administration was either the accused or the plaintiff). There were an additional 34,581 cases in which administrative compensations were awarded to citizen victims.

The sharpest rises in citizens' law suits have concentrated on areas of urban and rural land acquisition and relocation programs, rural levies, corporate restructuring, labor relations and social security issues, and protection of natural resources and the environment, said the senior justice official.

To meet the growing pressure on courts, the SPC yesterday announced in Beijing the launch of the two new practices, which it says aim to prevent conflicts of interest occurring in local court hearings.

Pilot projects held already in selected regions have claimed success for the new practices, which are known as transferred hearings and cross-region hearings:

In a transferred hearing, a trial is designated to be handled by a court of a higher level rather than by the plaintiff's local court.

In a cross-region hearing, a trial is designated to be handled by the court in a region other than where the plaintiff is based.

SPC vice-president Cao Jianming said the apex court is preparing for its judicial review on the use of the new practices before they can be introduced on a widespread basis and grow into a national system.

Subject to a request by the citizen involved in the case, the designations will be decided on by a people's intermediate court, usually at the city level, when relevant law suits are waiting to be heard by courts on the district-level, Cao said.

The first pilot projects for the new practices were held in 2002 in Taizhou, a city in East China's Zhejiang Province, before being expanded to four other cities in the province.

The provincial high people's court said there was a much greater likelihood of citizens winning their cases in the event of a transferred or cross-region hearing.

From July 2002 to the end of 2005, Taizhou's district courts handled 447 cross-region hearings, in which the proportion of court verdicts against the accused (generally a government official or agency) was two-and-a-half times that achieved in trials handled without a cross-region hearing.

Source: China Daily