How China's E-Justice System Works?

Since Chief Justice Zhou Qiang became the president of China's Supreme People's Court (SPC) in 2012, the two main focuses of the Chinese courts have been implementing an e-justice system and judicial reforms. In China's latest round of judicial reforms (2014-2017), information technology stood out as one of the main means to achieve the goal of judicial reform with 35 out of the 65 judicial reform tasks relying on information technology.

This article aims to identify the various unique information management systems that connect the courts across the country, as well as the artificial intelligence-empowered high technology deployed within the judiciary. This is definitely in line with China's judicial reforms as it helps streamline information while promoting transparency in enforcement, which are all a direct result of the successful implementation of the technological systems in the Chinese courts.

The information system of Chinese courts mainly includes the following subsystems:

1. Office Automation System

This system assists judges in handling cases, which includes allowing judges to reference judgments of the same type of case at hand (i.e., the “similar cases pushing” mechanism); automatic judgment drafting, and automatically correcting errors in the judgment. Chinese courts want to incorporate artificial intelligence into the system to assist judges in making decisions, to improve their efficiency, or to alert judges of abnormal decisions so as to supervise behaviors.