The Supreme People’s Court of China (“SPC”) just issued its Detailed Rules on Implementing the “Provisions of the Supreme People’s Court on Case Guidance” (“Detailed Rules”), giving Chinese judges much-needed instruction on how to refer to Guiding Cases (“GCs”) in subsequent cases.

According to the Detailed Rules, if the “basic facts” (“基本案情”) and issues involved in the “application of law” (“法律适用”) in a pending case are similar to those of a GC, the deciding court should refer to the “Major Points of the Adjudication” (“裁判要点”) of that GC (Article 9) and the GC should be explicitly mentioned as part of the reasons for the adjudication (“裁判理由”) (Article 10).   Full-text translation of the Detailed Rules will be available on the CGCP website on June 12, 2015. Discussion of the Detailed Rules and their implications will be included in the next issue of Guiding Cases Analytics^TM.

The issuance of the Detailed Rules is a clear step to achieve one of the goals stated by China’s top leaders in their Fourth Plenum Decision adopted in October 2014: “to strengthen and standardize [the systems of] … case guidance to unify the applicable standards in law”. Since the first batch of GCs was released in 2011, legal actors in China—particularly judges—have been uncertain about how to refer to GCs (see Guiding Cases Surveys^TM, Issue No. 1). The CGCP’s recent analysis of more than 200 subsequent cases in which parties and/or judges have mentioned the term “Guiding Cases” shows that in over 50% of all instances, the references are made incorrectly or without any relevance to the GCs (see Guiding Cases Surveys^TM, Issue No. 2, forthcoming).

Seizing this unprecedented opportunity for meaningful judicial reform, the China Guiding Cases Project of Stanford Law School (“CGCP”) envisions its efforts in building a unique knowledge-base to be a critical complement to China’s reform agenda and advancements such as the Detailed Rules. The knowledge-base, which is accessible for free through the CGCP website, features the following six major and most up-to-date bilingual products produced by a global team of more than 150 members:

•   high quality full-text versions and English translations of all released GCs;

•   commentaries on GCs and related subjects;

•   Guiding Cases in Perspective™ series, a unique product that identifies the original judgments selected by the SPC, examines their transformation into GCs, and explores the treatment of the GCs in subsequent cases (see, e.g., Guiding Cases in Perspective™ for GC 9, available here);

•  Guiding Cases Analytics™, a proprietary serial publication that aggregates information on all GCs released to date and performs quantitative analyses to identify trends and important issues for further study;

•  Guiding Cases Surveys™, a publication of empirical data collected by the CGCP through its first-hand surveys of Chinese legal actors and analysis of subsequent cases referring to the GCs to illustrate how GCs are perceived and used; and

•  Guiding Cases Seminars™, which feature talks on GC-related subjects presented by scholars, lawyers, policymakers, and other experts and are disseminated in text summary and video to reach the CGCP’s global audience.

Since the CGCP website was launched, it has attracted approximately 15,000 unique users and 100,000 page views. This success would not have been possible without the gracious support of our sponsors. To continue producing high-quality products and analysis in 2016 and beyond, we need your support. If you like our work, please consider joining the CGCP community as a sponsor now. Thank you!