Courts reform 'can help educate public'

China's top court has reiterated the significance and determination of judicial openness, clarifying that rulings that can promote development of the rule of law or educate the public should all be disclosed online.

The reiteration and clarification were made by Zhang Jun, president of the Supreme People's Court, at an annual meeting related to courts' work, which was held in Beijing on Sunday.

Zhang said that profound changes in the international and domestic environment, as well as the rapid growth of big data technology, have demanded that Chinese courts deepen judicial transparency.

While urging verdicts with law education and judicial guidance to go online, he has also called for the top court and high people's courts to disclose more rulings on the internet.

"The number of online judgments should be maintained on a considerate scale, and need to cover various fields and case types," he added.

In addition, he underscored that the importance of personal information protection in the disclosure of rulings to ensure the life and work of litigants and their families, or the business and development of enterprises, cannot be affected by the judicial openness.

As courts nationwide have been ordered to improve the quantity and quality of rulings, the establishment of a new online archive is also being advanced, in part to offer more channels for the public to see verdicts and learn about the law, he said.

According to a statement issued by the top court in late December, the new online archive is a library of all cases with reference value, no matter whether the material is provided by a court, a lawyer or a resident, and it will be accessible to everyone for research and learning legal knowledge.

The statement stressed that the library and the China Judgements Online, the top court's website for disclosing rulings, will complement each other, "meaning we won't replace the website with the library".

In short, the Chinese courts' determination and efforts to promote judicial openness will not be weakened, and its approach to ensuring the transparency will become more diverse, it added.