Research on Balancing the Conflict Between Law and Public Opinion in Judicial Judgment

The number of Internet users in China has exceeded one billion. With the rapid development of Internet platforms, the channels for expressing public opinion have skyrocketed, and judicial decisions have been placed under unprecedentedly powerful and extensive supervision. The conflict between law and public opinion in cases with high popularity needs to be solved urgently. As a vital means to maintain social order, whether the law can be highly recognized by public opinion is significant for comprehensively promoting the rule of law. Based on well-known cases including “Zhang Koukou Case”, “Yu Huan Case” and “Lu Yong Case”, this paper analyzes and speculates that the reasons for the conflict between law and public opinions may lie in the conflict between judges’ legal thinking and people’s moral concepts, the conflict between independent and fair justice and the tendency to expand public opinion expression, and the conflict between the universality of law and the particularity of individual cases. Then, this paper seeks the enlightenment from the history of Chinese legal system and the judicial system overseas. It also proposes the necessity of reconciling and balancing judicial judgment and public opinion, and giving full play to the assessors’ participation and the case guidance system to guide judicial judgment, so as to promote the balance between law and public opinion in judicial judgment.