In November 2021, China’s Supreme People’s Court issued the “Guiding Opinions on Strengthening and Improving Efforts on the Evaluation of Judges” (关于加强和完善法官考核工作的指导意见), which sets up different evaluation indicators by level for Chinese courts.
In our previous article “Performance Appraisal: A Decisive Factor in Chinese Judges’ Behavior Patterns”, we mentioned that the performance appraisal system exerts an extremely significant impact on the judges' behavior. If you want to establish reasonable expectations about how Chinese judges hear cases, you’d better take into account the role of the performance appraisal system.
The Supreme People’s Court (SPC) has been trying to apply more reasonable and scientific assessments to guide judges to achieve better performance.
To this end, on 3 Nov. 2021, the SPC issued the “Guiding Opinions on Strengthening and Improving Efforts on the Evaluation of Judges” (hereinafter “the Guiding Opinions”, 关于加强和完善法官考核工作的指导意见).
The Guiding Opinions stipulates that evaluation indicators shall be in accordance with the trial functions and positions of the four levels of court, and set up by level and type based on the characteristics of the different levels of court and different operational paths (positions).
For primary people’s courts, the evaluation indicators should emphasize reflecting areas such as verifying facts and the substantive resolution of disputes; the evaluation indicators for intermediate people's courts, the effectiveness of the second instance as final judgment and accuracy in dispute settlement; for high people's courts, correcting legal defects on retrial in accordance with law and unifying measurements for judicial rulings; and for the Supreme People's Court, the efforts to supervise and guide national trial work, and ensuring the correct and uniform application of the law.
Cover Photo by Yang yang on Unsplash
Contributors: CJO Staff Contributors Team
