Report on the Work of the Supreme People's Court (2014)
IV. Deepening Judicial Openness and Promoting Judicial Fairness
—— Intensifying open court trials. The SPC actively carried forward justice in sunshine, released case facts, verdict evidences, debate viewpoints, and grounds of decisions in a comprehensive and objective way, so as to facilitate people's understanding of judicial adjudication, and manifest civilization and dignity of rule of law. It set up China's Court Trial Live Broadcast Network, and made 45,000 live broadcasts of court trials in people's courts at various levels. The SPC live broadcasted court trials of socially concerned high-profile cases, for instance, Jinan Intermediate People's Court brought on a complete live broadcast via microblog for the court session of Bo Xilai case, which got favorable result.
—— Speeding up online publishing of written judgments. The SPC promulgated the regulation governing people's courts to publish written judgments on the Internet, and set up the China Written Judgments Network. Since then, 3,858 effective SPC written judgments and 1.646 million effective written judgments of local people's courts at various levels have been disclosed on the Internet, which fully display the role of written judgments in spreading legal knowledge, guiding social custom, regulating public behavior, establishing correct orientations, and delivering positive energy of rule of law, while facilitating the improvement of professional competence and judicial level of judges.
—— Bringing forth new forms of judicial openness. The SPC endeavored to reinforce the construction of three platforms for open trial procedures, open written judgments and open enforcement information, fully carried forward openness in case-filing, court trials, execution, hearing, documents and judicial affairs, to prevent black box operation. The SPC enhanced the construction of its official affairs website, and opened the SPC official accounts on Sina Microblog, WeChat and news terminals, and established the "national court Microblog release hall" to timely issue trial execution information to the public, and facilitate the people to acquaint with court work through the new media. The SPC also launched the theme open day activity, and invited NPC delegates, CPPCC members, the public and minors to go into courts and approach judges to experience court work at a zero distance.
—— Providing technical support for judicial openness. The SPC formulated a five-year plan of information-based construction in people's courts, carried forward the construction of a nationwide court information network, known as "Scale Project", to comprehensively elevate the information-based level. The SPC developed technology tribunals and promoted whole-course audio and video recordings of court trials. The SPC set up the information management center, facilitated integrated use of judicial information resources at the four levels of courts, and provided technological guarantee for deepening judicial openness.