My Take | China’s move to scale back judicial transparency may be bigger political threat to Beijing than scrutiny of cases
- Security concerns could be the real reason behind Supreme People’s Court announcement it will reduce cases uploaded to public archive
- Legal practitioners warn the judicial system is likely to get worse because Communist Party is getting rid of public scrutiny – which will only create more social grievances
A Supreme People’s Court official told the party mouthpiece People’s Daily that Beijing would not shut down the China Judgements Online website that contains over 100 million judgments. However, he said “embracing judicial transparency doesn’t mean we need to post all judicial information on the internet”.
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When the database was launched 10 years ago, it was intended to improve transparency by making all court documents public, except those related to minor offences, state secrets, divorce and other exceptions decided by the court. So, the statement from the Supreme People’s Court raised eyebrows.
It is not clear if the resource will be phased out eventually, or whether courts are still required to upload their judgments there.
The court official cited protection of privacy, difficulty for legal practitioners searching the large volume of cases and security threats as reasons for the changes.
It is a common practice among developed countries and modern cities, including Hong Kong, to publicise court rulings.
Privacy protection has always been part of the discussion. While certain personal information would be hidden from the documents made public, most developed countries agree that the public’s right to access court rulings is of the utmost importance to ensure judicial transparency, and that privacy is not a convincing reason to keep court rulings from being publicised.
