Fa [2021] No.289
In order to further standardize the application of uniform laws in the Supreme People's Court, ensure the uniform and correct implementation of laws, safeguard judicial justice and enhance judicial credibility, these measures are formulated in combination with the actual work of trial execution in the Supreme People's Court.
Article 1 The term "uniform application of law" as mentioned in these Measures includes the work of drafting and formulating judicial interpretations or other normative documents, publishing cases, implementing a similar case search system, and convening professional judges' meetings to discuss cases to promote the uniform and correct implementation of laws.
Article 2 The Judicial Committee of the Supreme People's Court (hereinafter referred to as the Judicial Committee) is responsible for the application of unified laws in the Supreme People's Court.
According to the division of functions, all departments are responsible for drafting and formulating unified laws such as judicial interpretation and issuing cases.
The trial management office (hereinafter referred to as the trial management office) is responsible for the overall planning, unified promotion and coordinated management of the application of unified laws.
Article 3 When handling cases for trial and execution, judicial organs shall strictly abide by legal procedures, follow the rules of evidence, correctly apply laws, and ensure the uniform and correct implementation of laws.
Article 4 All departments shall, according to the division of functions, sum up experience in difficult problems and inconsistent cases in the application of laws, guide judicial practice through replies, meeting minutes and other forms, and formulate judicial interpretations or other normative documents to regulate them when conditions are ripe.
Article 5 The research office is responsible for the collection, examination, publication, compilation and evaluation of guiding cases. Typical cases released by other departments shall not conflict with the judgment viewpoints and standards of guiding cases, and shall not be named as guiding cases or guiding cases.
Article 6 In any of the following cases, the judge in charge shall look for similar cases:
(a) submitted to the Committee and the professional judges meeting for discussion;
(two) the lack of clear ruling rules or the formation of a unified ruling rules;
(three) major, difficult, complex and sensitive;
(four) involving group disputes or causing widespread concern in society, which may affect social stability;
(five) may conflict with similar cases in the Supreme People's Court;
(six) the relevant units or individuals reflect the judge's illegal trial behavior;
(7) the Supreme People's Procuratorate protested;
(eight) in the course of the trial, the public prosecution organ, the parties and their defenders and agents ad litem submitted guiding cases or cases in which the effective judgment of the Supreme People's Court supported their claims;
(nine) the president of the court according to the requirements of judicial supervision and management authority to find similar cases.
Case retrieval can only retrieve the guiding cases issued by the Supreme People's Court and the effective judgments of the Supreme People's Court.
Article 7 For a case that should be searched according to Article 6 of these Measures, the judge in charge shall explain the case search in the trial report or make a special case search report.
The explanation or report of case retrieval shall objectively, comprehensively and accurately reflect the results of case retrieval, and shall be submitted together when the collegial panel deliberates or the professional judges' meeting, the compensation committee, the judicial relief committee and the judicial committee discuss. The case retrieval report should be classified into two volumes with the case.
Article 8 In accordance with the provisions of Article 6 of these Measures, the collegial panel shall incorporate the uniform standards for the application of law in cases into the contents of its deliberations.
In the course of the trial, if the public prosecution organ, the parties, their defenders and agents ad litem submit guiding cases or the judgment of the Supreme People's Court's effective cases supports their claims, the collegial panel shall include the submitted cases or effective judgments and whether the pending cases belong to this kind of cases in the review.
Article 9 If the pending case and the retrieved guiding case are similar in basic facts and legal application, the collegial panel shall refer to the main points of the guiding case for adjudication.
If a guiding case is cited, it shall be cited as the reason for judgment, but it shall not be used as the basis for judgment. If the guiding case is cited in the judgment reasons, the number of the guiding case shall be indicated.
Article 10 If the judgment result of the pending case is inconsistent with the guiding case and the applicable standard of law in the Supreme People's Court, or the judgment result will form a new applicable standard of law, the collegial panel shall submit it to the professional judge meeting of the department for discussion; If the president of our hospital finds that the pending case has the above situation, he shall convene a meeting of professional judges in his department to discuss it according to the procedure.
If the case specified in the preceding paragraph is not suitable for discussion at the meeting of professional judges due to confidentiality and other reasons, it can be directly submitted to the judicial Committee for discussion after being approved by the leaders in charge of the hospital.
Eleventh the Supreme People's Court should establish and improve the mechanism of inter-departmental professional judges' meeting, and study and solve the differences in the application of laws between departments or major cross-disciplinary legal application issues.
Article 12 When discussing cases at departmental professional judges' meetings and inter-departmental professional judges' meetings, case discussion records and meeting minutes shall be formed. The case discussion records and meeting minutes are attached with the case.
The minutes of the inter-departmental professional judges' meeting are distributed to the members of the audit committee and relevant judicial departments, and the audit office is responsible for filing.
Article 13 The person in charge of each judicial business department shall, in accordance with the jurisdiction of judicial supervision and management, strengthen judicial management and professional guidance to ensure the unification of applicable standards of law.
The judicial business department shall analyze and study the cases in which the opinions of the collegial panel and the professional judges' meeting are inconsistent with the decisions of the judicial committee, and carefully sort out and summarize the inconsistent and unclear application of the law in the practice of trial execution. The trial management office should find, collect and sort out the inconsistent and unclear application of the law in time through case quality evaluation and letters from the masses.
Article 14 For the problems found through various channels that the application of specific laws is not uniform and clear, the Audit Commission may organize research in various forms, put forward solutions and submit them to the Audit Committee for discussion, and clarify the specific ruling rules in the form of resolutions on the application of laws by the Audit Committee.
Article 15 the Supreme People's Court shall establish a unified legal application platform and its database, and the audit office, research office of the people's court, China Institute of Applied Law and information technology service center shall be responsible for the planning, construction, research and development, operation, maintenance and upgrading of the unified legal application platform and its database according to their respective functions.
Article 16 After the guiding cases, cases of second instance, retrial cases, requests for instructions, cases of reconsideration supervision by various judicial departments, cases discussed by professional judges' meetings, compensation committees, judicial relief committees and judicial committees and other typical cases with universal guiding significance are published on the Internet, the judicial management office shall promptly organize compilation and incorporate them into the database of the unified legal application platform.
The standard and number of death penalty review cases included in the database of the unified legal application platform shall be determined by each criminal court according to the confidentiality requirements.
The cases discussed at the meeting of professional judges shall be included in the database of the unified legal application platform, and the judicial business department shall designate a person to be responsible for regularly submitting the minutes of the meeting of professional judges of relevant cases, and the cases shall be included in the database of the unified legal application platform.
Seventeenth cases included in the database of the unified legal application platform shall be inspected and cleaned up in time.
In the course of work, if all departments find that the cases included in the database of the unified legal application platform have no guiding significance and reference value, or the relevant judgments have been revised or revoked, they shall promptly notify the audit institutions to update them.
Article 18. All departments should strengthen the training of judicial personnel's professional ability, strengthen the training of judicial personnel's legal interpretation, case analysis, case retrieval and scientific and technological application ability, and comprehensively improve the ability and level of judicial personnel to apply the law uniformly.
Nineteenth judges to participate in professional judges' meetings, sorting out the rules of case adjudication, etc. Should be included in the workload. Cases recommended or compiled by various departments and judges are determined as guiding cases by the judicial committee, or research opinions on specific legal application issues are adopted by the judicial committee, forming a resolution on legal application issues of the judicial committee, which can be used as extra points for performance appraisal.
Article 20 These Measures shall come into force as of 202 1 12 1.
Understanding and Application of "Implementation Measures for the Application of Uniform Laws in the Supreme People's Court"
The Implementation Measures of the Supreme People's Court on the Application of Uniform Laws (hereinafter referred to as the "Implementation Measures") was discussed and adopted at the1845th meeting of the Judicial Committee of the Supreme People's Court, and came into effect on 202121. Briefly introduce and explain the background and main contents of the Implementation Measures.
Second, the main contents of the "implementation measures"
Article 20 of the "Implementation Measures" mainly includes five aspects: First, the content of uniform law application is generally stipulated, and the basic requirements for handling cases, formulating judicial interpretations and publishing cases are reiterated from the perspective of uniform law application, so as to ensure the full play of judicial interpretations and case norms. The second is to further clarify the situation and scope of similar case retrieval, clarify the production norms of similar case retrieval instructions or reports, strengthen the requirements of similar case retrieval system, and promote "similar cases with the same judgment." The third is to further supplement and clarify the scope of cases discussed by professional judges' meetings in various departments, and at the same time establish and improve the mechanism of inter-departmental professional judges' meetings, study and solve the differences in the application of laws across departments or major cross-disciplinary issues, and provide professional advice for judges to handle difficult and complicated cases. The fourth is to innovate the mechanism to solve specific problems in the application of law, and improve the timeliness and convenience of the guidance of referee rules through the resolution of the judicial Committee on the application of law. The fifth is to clarify the requirements of building a unified legal application platform and its case base, improve the scientific and technological application level of unified legal application and standardizing the exercise of discretion, and solve the problem that judges retrieve too much information about invalid cases in practice and it is difficult to summarize and refer to them.
1. clarifies the situation and scope of compulsory retrieval cases in the Supreme People's Court case. Article 6 of the Implementation Measures requires that in the trial of cases, in addition to the cases that should be found according to the Guiding Opinions on Finding Similar Cases, the Supreme People's Procuratorate lodged a protest against the "four types of cases" stipulated in Several Opinions of the Supreme People's Court on Improving the Judicial Responsibility System of People's Courts and Guiding Opinions of the Supreme People's Court on Further Improving the Supervision and Management Mechanism of "four types of cases". As well as the guiding cases submitted by the public prosecution organ, the parties, their defenders and agents ad litem during the trial, or the cases supported by the effective judgment of the Supreme People's Court, similar cases should also be searched, so as to strengthen the supervision and management of the "four types of cases", respond to the expectations of the parties and ensure that there is no difference in the application of law by judges in the Supreme People's Court.
In the process of drafting, as to whether it is necessary to broaden the circumstances that should be searched in similar cases, some people think that the circumstances that need to be searched in similar cases have been stipulated by the system, and there is no need to broaden them so as not to increase the workload of judges. In the process of formulation, it is considered that (1) "four types of cases" are the key cases that the people's courts need to supervise and manage; (2) The Guiding Opinions on Category-based Case Retrieval is not clear enough about whether "four types of cases" need category-based case retrieval, and the conclusion that category-based case retrieval should be carried out needs to be deduced through the Guiding Opinions on Professional Judges' Meeting and other related systems, which needs to be clear; (3) In practice, in the process of trial, the public prosecution organ, the parties and their defenders and agents ad litem submitted guiding cases or the judge supported their claims in the case of the Supreme People's Court's entry into force, and the situation that the judge did not adopt the opinions of the parties and agents and did not explain them was widely criticized and needed to be standardized. Finally, on the basis of comprehensively summarizing the existing system, the Implementation Measures determines the types of cases that should be searched for similar cases.
Article 7 of the Implementation Measures requires that the description and report of case-based retrieval should be objective and comprehensive, reflecting the results of case-based retrieval. At the same time, the style of case retrieval report is standardized to ensure that the court staff fully reflect the focus of the dispute, the different judgment opinions retrieved, the opinions to be adopted and the reasons in the case retrieval process.
2. It is clear that the collegial panel should incorporate the applicable standards of the unified law in the case into the review content. Article 8 of the "Implementation Measures" stipulates that the collegial panel shall incorporate the application of the unified law of cases into the evaluation of cases searched in accordance with regulations; At the same time, it is stipulated that if the public prosecution organ, the parties, their defenders and agents ad litem submit guiding cases or the Supreme People's Court's effective judgment supports their claims during the trial, the collegial panel shall include whether the submitted cases, effective judgments and pending cases belong to the category of cases. This provision is to prevent the case-handling judge from ignoring the cases and effective judgments submitted by the parties and their agents, effectively meet the requirements of the parties and their agents for submitting guiding cases and responding to other cases as stipulated in Article 10 of the Guiding Opinions on Similar Cases Retrieval, and finally form a trial mechanism in which the collegiate bench refers to similar cases and uniformly applies the law.
3. Clarify the case of the Supreme People's Court submitted to the meeting of professional judges for discussion. The Guiding Opinions of Professional Judges' Meeting stipulates that it is recommended that the president of our hospital submit it to the professional judges' meeting for discussion, including five situations in which the independent court thinks it necessary to submit it for discussion and the minority judges think it necessary to submit it for discussion. On the basis of the above provisions, the "Implementation Measures" is clearly supplemented. For unresolved cases whose judgment results are inconsistent with the applicable standards of guiding cases and the Supreme People's Court cases, the collegial panel should suggest the president to hold a meeting of professional judges for discussion, so as to give full play to the role of the meeting of professional judges in assisting decision-making in handling cases, unifying the application of laws and strengthening supervision.
4. Establish and improve the inter-departmental professional judges' meeting mechanism in the Supreme People's Court. Article 2 of the Guiding Opinions on Professional Judges' Meetings issued in 2002 1,1year 10 stipulates that "professional judges' meetings may be held across professional trial fields, trial courts and trial teams when necessary". Since then, many high and intermediate courts have established inter-departmental professional judges' meeting mechanism, which has generally achieved good results. In June this year, the Central Leading Group for Judicial System Reform issued the "Reform Plan on Improving the Orientation of the Trial-level Function of the Four-level Courts", clearly requiring the Supreme People's Court to "establish an inter-departmental professional judge meeting mechanism". In the trial practice, there are indeed some problems in the Supreme People's Court, such as the inconsistency between the trial business department and the circuit court in the application of the law to some cases, and the differences in the application of the law to some cases involving the intersection of criminal and civil, civil and administrative. In order to implement the deployment of the leading group for the reform of the central judicial system and properly resolve the differences in the application of the above-mentioned laws, the "Implementation Measures" are formulated this time, drawing on the excellent experience of some high and intermediate courts. Article 11 stipulates that the Supreme People's Court should establish and improve the mechanism of inter-departmental professional judges' meeting, and study and solve the differences in the application of laws between departments or major cross-cutting issues in the application of laws. In fact, the the Supreme People's Court Administrative Tribunal and the administrative judges of the circuit courts have jointly studied the legal application of some administrative cases, which has formed the embryonic form of the inter-departmental professional judges' meeting, and the regulations adopted this time have been further clarified. As for the composition, convening, presiding and connection with the judicial committee of the inter-departmental professional judges' meeting, according to the discussion opinions of the judicial committee, it will be refined and clarified after it is put into practice.
5. Innovate the mechanism to solve specific legal application problems. In addition to judicial interpretation and case guidance, in the existing system, the the Supreme People's Court Judicial Committee needs to rely on specific cases to solve the differences in the application of the law, and the ways and means to solve them are too simple; However, the judicial departments in the Supreme People's Court are not enthusiastic about solving the differences in the application of the law through specific cases. The Implementation Measures of the Supreme People's Court on Establishing a Dispute Resolution Mechanism for the Application of Law has been implemented for two years, and few applications for dispute resolution have been received based on this mechanism. In order to solve the above problems, the Supreme People's Court Trial Management Office has explored and established a new dispute resolution mechanism for the application of specific laws. In view of the problems found through various channels that the application of specific laws is not uniform and clear, especially when the conditions for formulating judicial interpretations or trial normative documents are not yet mature, the implementation measures stipulate that the trial management office should organize research, put forward solutions and submit them to the judicial Committee for discussion, and issue specific judgment rules to various trial business departments in the form of resolutions on the application of laws by the judicial Committee.
Up to now, the Supreme People's Court Trial Management Office has collected more than 70 clues about the inconsistency of legal application standards and the difference of similar cases in trial practice from various trial business departments, and comprehensively grasped the inconsistency of judgment rules in various trial fields. The trial management office has given priority to organizing typical research with concentrated clues, and organized inter-departmental professional judges' meetings as appropriate to solicit opinions from relevant departments or experts and scholars, and finally formed specific research opinions and solutions, which were submitted to the judicial Committee for discussion. Different from the more systematic and complete judicial interpretation and judicial work meeting minutes, this mechanism is more likely to touch on differences. If there are mature ones, they can be submitted for discussion. After one discussion, the determined referee rules can be published and applied to one item, which has the characteristics of simple procedure, flexibility and strong pertinence, and is conducive to unifying the internal referee ideas in time.
6. It is clear to establish a unified legal application platform and its database in the Supreme People's Court. In order to implement the key points of judicial reform in 20021People's Court and provide rules and reference cases for judges to handle cases, according to the requirements of various judicial departments in the Supreme People's Court, the implementation measures stipulate that the Supreme People's Court should establish a unified legal application platform and its database, and the trial management office, research office, China Applied Law Research Association and information technology service center of the People's Court should be responsible for the planning, construction, research and development, operation, maintenance and upgrading of the platform and database according to their respective functions. On the basis of the Supreme People's Court's referee resources, a platform integrating law, judicial interpretation, case retrieval, application and research will be built to achieve deep integration with the existing case handling platform and ensure safety and reliability. After the platform is launched, it can provide an accurate and authoritative case retrieval system for court judges in the Supreme People's Court and even the whole country, fully tap the value of cases, and quickly issue case retrieval reports through the combination of intelligent analysis and manual screening, thus improving the informatization level of unified law application.
In order to solve the problems that the judgment rules provided by the existing similar case retrieval platform are not intuitive, the results are complex, the matching is inaccurate, and the retrieval efficiency and effect are not ideal, the Supreme People's Court will also organize relevant trial business departments to systematically sort out the effective judgments, refine and compile the judgment rules, and publish the guiding cases, second-instance cases, retrial cases, requests for instructions and reconsideration supervision cases of various trial business departments. Cases discussed by professional judges' meetings, compensation committees, judicial relief committees and judicial committees, as well as other typical cases with universal guiding significance, are all included in the database, which is convenient for judges to fully grasp and apply judicial cases in the Supreme People's Court.
After the promulgation of the "Implementation Measures", the Supreme People's Court will fully implement it in the trial work, further promote the uniform application of laws, standardize the correct exercise of discretion, ensure fair and efficient trials according to law, continuously enhance the people's sense of the rule of law, and strive to make the people feel fair and just in every judicial case.