Judges learn legal systems overseas

Beijing(China)—As China’s economy continues to grow and globalize, the legal community has come to realize that the country’s body of laws needs updating and globalizing, as well. In some situations, China didn’t have a law; in others, it wasn’t current.
So, the country began sending judges and prosecutors overseas for legal training along with lawmakers to bring legislation and law enforcement up to international standards. Shen Xiaojie, a district-level prosecutor in his 20s from Shenyang, Liaoning Province in Northeast China, was one of them. After studying for 15 months in a programme offered jointly by Temple and Tsinghua universities, he received a Master of Law (LL.M.) degree from Temple in October.
Shen and his classmates studied on Temple’s main campus, located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for two months. During the 13 remaining months, they went to Tsinghua in Beijing, where teachers from Temple’s Beasley School of Law instructed them. “A scholar once said that in the legal field, globalization is Americanization to a large extent, so we have to learn from the United States,” Shen said, referring to both knowledge and the way of thinking. For example, courts in some regions in China began to experiment with plea bargaining between the prosecutor and criminal defendant a procedure learnt from the Anglo-American legal system, Shen said.
“Through systematic study, I know how plea bargaining is conducted in the United States and how the system balances the interests of various parties,” he said. What he learnt in the United States and from his American teachers will help him deal with some future reform measures, Shen said, but principles related to China’s legal code will not be changed solely through judicial reform. “Learning from overseas will help China grow stronger,” Shen said. Shen and the other judges and prosecutors, who accounted for half of the student total, did not pay the US$18,000 tuition. That was paid through donations, according to Adelaide Ferguson, Temple’s assistant vice-president for international programmes.

—Daily Mail, People’s Daily news exchange item