Comprehensive Measures to Address the Overall Decentralization of Civil Cases: A Case Study of the People’s Court in County S, China

In order to avoid the overlapping functions of four levels of courts and to better construct a fair and just judicial system that serves the people, the Supreme People’s Court has issued a notice promoting the reform of the functional positioning of four levels of courts. Among them, grassroots courts handle the highest number of cases, have the largest quantity, and are distributed most widely, making them an important focus in the reform of functional positioning. After the reform, civil cases will be comprehensively decentralized to grassroots courts, which means that grassroots courts will handle the majority of civil cases and gradually become the center for civil case adjudication. However, this also brings significant challenges to grassroots courts. Therefore, in order to avoid the negative impact of the comprehensive decentralization of civil cases on grassroots courts, measures such as guidance from superior courts, alternative dispute resolution mechanisms, optimization of personnel allocation at the grassroots level, and improvement of work efficiency are particularly important.