The Supreme People's Court recently released a 14-item pilot guidance on strengthening past case retrieval or review to deepen judicial accountability reform, improve the case retrieval system and build consistency in legal decisions. The guidance went into effect on July 31.

The guidance stresses that judges must comply with the judgments of "guiding" cases and refer to "reference cases" for consistency in case judgments.

The guidance specifies four situations under which case retrieval should be carried out: cases need to be discussed at meetings of presiding judges or judicial committees; there are no clear judicial rules or unified judicial rules have yet to be formulated; retrieval of similar cases is required by courts' presidents and presiding judges according to the jurisdiction of trial supervision and administration; and when review of any other specific past cases is needed.