Much Cry and Little Wool: Judicial Mediation Policy in Action in W Court

Abstract

The policy gives judicial mediation priority as dispute resolution, which is utilized to coordinate legal, social and political effects. The approach from the state for policy enforcement is evaluation system in courts, which is a form of responsibility system in Chinese court system. Judges and courts face annual targets for permissible numbers of reversed, mediated and closed cases. The previous researches about responsibility system are more about the government administration, specifically the relationship between the central and local government. This paper’s purpose is to examine whether the evaluation system in courts is an effective approach to enforce the aforementioned judicial mediation policy, with special reference concerning divorce cases in W Basic People’s Court in X city, S province in Northwestern China. The collected divorce cases display the tension between dispute settlement and right protection. The evaluation system is one of the reasons in the tension context that produces the current pragmatism, which in turn is merely capable to partially achieve coordination.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n13p293