The expansion of judicial power in China.

摘要

For the past two decades, the law and courts have played an expanding role in China. This phenomenon has created the hope that the development of rule of law might serve as an avenue for democratization. Yet, for the most part, political scientists have not given adequate attention to this development. This dissertation is an attempt to analyze the expansion of judicial power vis-a-vis administrative power in China. Focusing on judicial review of administrative actions, this study explains why and under what conditions China's judicial power has expanded. It contends that the expansion of judicial power has resulted mainly from the efforts of the principal actors to restrain bureaucracy and to further their own collective or institutional interests. By doing so, they provided more protection of the rights of the Chinese citizens against unjust administrative actions. Thus, the dynamics generated by the legal reforms has brought about changes in the balance of power within the state and has created pressures for further political change. The arguments of this study are based on the analyses of the undertakings of the three principal actors: the top leadership, which decided to experiment with judicial review; the National People's Congress, which established judicial review as a formal institution; and the higher courts, which encouraged the lower ones to expand the power of judicial review. Based on extensive field research conducted in all levels of courts in Jilin, Beijing, Henan, Hubei and Shanghai, this study also analyzes the institutions of the courts, the judges' behavior, and the ways in which the interactions between institutions and also between institutions and judges affected the outcome of cases. Specifically, it argues that the external institutions pushed the courts in two directions: while the court's relationship with local authorities constrained the exercise of judicial power, the intensified supervision from higher courts pushed the lower courts to expand the scope of review. Furthermore, the courts' internal institutions (the adjudicative committee and the collegial panel) both exposed and mediated the tensions between the external institutions. The result was the evident though limited expansion of the judicial power.