Top Chinese political-legal officials have initiated a model
judge campaign stressing the achievements of Chen Yanping, a district court
judge from Jiangsu province, and promoting her as the public face of judicial reform themes currently being pursued.
On January 19, Politburo Standing Committee member, Zhou Yongkang, and President of the Supreme People’s Court (SPC), Wang Shengjun, lauded Chen at a large-scale conference in Beijing organized jointly by the central Party political-legal committee, propaganda officials, and the SPC, and focusing on her accomplishments.
State media reported that Zhou praised Chen’s successes, including the fact that in 14 years, Chen Yanping successfully handled 3100 cases, with not one incorrectly decided (cuo’an) case, nor one that gave rise to a single complaint, nor one resulting in a single petition (shangfang). Both Zhou and SPC President Wang (his comments here) also linked Chen’s accomplishments to themes that Party and court officials have repeatedly stressed over the last two years. These include: the “Three Supremes” campaign, the importance of authorities preventing local grievances from generating petitions to higher level authorities, the desirability of mediation (as opposed to trial) [for earlier discussion of this, see here], and a preference for a model of a grassroots judge who “goes to the people” and proactively finds and resolves disputes in any way necessary, rather than a judge who sits in a courtroom and relies on disposing of cases on technical legal grounds.
The prominence of the campaign suggests that this will continue to spread through the Chinese judiciary over coming weeks and months. And indeed, the Hunan provincial high court has already followed suit with a “study Chen Yanping” conference.
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