Mission impossible? Judges’ playing of dual roles as adjudicator and mediator in Chinese court conciliation
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Xu Youping
Abstract
Deeply rooted in the Confucian philosophy of harmony, court conciliation conducted by judges in Chinese courtroom has played an important role in resolving civil disputes in China. However, severe criticisms against court conciliation have never been ceased. Critics generally attribute problems to the integration of mediation into adjudication and judges’ playing of dual roles as adjudicator and mediator. Sadly, little has been done to explore how judges’ dual roles in court conciliation are performed and changed, and how the performance and change of judges’ dual roles may affect justice and fairness in dispute resolution. This paper compares the similarities and differences of a judge’s role as an adjudicator and the role of a mediator, analyzes how judges’ dual roles are performed and changed through different patterns of information flow and information sharing, and discusses the impacts of judges’ role change and ways to resolve role conflicts. It is found that similarities between the two roles make it possible for judges in CC to play dual roles, but different role expectations give rise to role conflicts which may, to some extent, be dissolved through effective ways of information exchange.
Funding statement: This paper is a part of the Guangdong Provincial Philosophy and Social Science Research Program (GD14YWW03, 2016WTSCX029).
Acknowledgements
I’m deeply indebted to Prof. Du Jinbang and Prof. Yuan Chuanyou for their helpful suggestions. My sincere thanks also go to anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments.
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© 2017 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- La sémiotique juridique verbale et nonverbale comme stratégie de communication du droit: Signs, symbols, and meanings in law
- “Verbal and nonverbal” in semiotics
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- The influence of legal tradition on Italian arbitration discourse
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- “You have to teach the judge what to do”: Semiotic gaps between unrepresented litigants and the common law
- The semiotic interpretation of legal subjects in China’s new criminal procedure law
- Mission impossible? Judges’ playing of dual roles as adjudicator and mediator in Chinese court conciliation
- “Is it the case that … ?”: Building toward findings of fact in Japanese criminal trials
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- La sémiotique juridique verbale et nonverbale comme stratégie de communication du droit: Signs, symbols, and meanings in law
- “Verbal and nonverbal” in semiotics
- The frowning balance: Semiotic insinuations on the visual rhetoric of justice
- Semiotics of visual evidence in law
- Observing laws through “understanding eyes”
- Interpreting law in socio-pragmatic space
- Conceptualizing cultural discrepancies in legal translation: A case-based study
- The first integrated practice of legal translation in modern China: A study of the Chinese translation of Elements of International Law, 1864
- Translations of early Sino-British treaties and the masked western legal concepts
- “Susanna and the Elders”: On the visual semiotic of shame
- Angels, warriors, and beacons: Totemic law, territorial coding, and monumental sculpture in post-industrial landscapes
- Expiration dates: Performative illusions of law and regulation
- From immunity to immunity. From immunity to silence: The case of Gilad Sharon
- Under western eyes: Articulation between indigenous justice and the national judicial system
- Police interpreting: The facts sheet
- The influence of legal tradition on Italian arbitration discourse
- Weighing and balancing of principles in cases with rule paradoxes
- “You have to teach the judge what to do”: Semiotic gaps between unrepresented litigants and the common law
- The semiotic interpretation of legal subjects in China’s new criminal procedure law
- Mission impossible? Judges’ playing of dual roles as adjudicator and mediator in Chinese court conciliation
- “Is it the case that … ?”: Building toward findings of fact in Japanese criminal trials
- Institutional interaction in traffic law enforcement in China: Resistance and obedience
- Duppying yoots in a dog eat dog world, kmt: Determining the senses of slang terms for the Courts
- Les structures sémantiques profondes du code pénal chinois
