Abstract This article examines the reality of “let the adjudicator judge” by investigating how Chinese judges are held accountable for their judgments under the expanded ex post case review system. We examine the first three years of the implementation of this headline initiative in a grassroots court (Court T) located in a major city in China. Our data include the internal quarterly reports produced by the court’s case review committee and interviews with judges. The assessments went beyond legal analysis, commenting on matters such as work ethic, diligence and moral sensibilities. Frontline judges view the review system as subjective and arbitrary. The new mechanism, however, alters the power dynamics between senior judges and their subordinates. While frontline judges no longer require pre-approval from senior judges, they rely on the goodwill of those same seniors to navigate the review process. Within this ostensibly freer framework, frontline judges are subjected to a more diffuse but pervasive form of discipline. Our analysis reveals how the adjudication committee, far from being sidelined, has shifted its role, concentrating ex ante supervision on a minority of difficult cases while holding judges accountable through ex post reviews of flawed judgments. The article further underscores the challenges of disentangling legal analysis from political supervision in a framework of authoritative legality.
Ng et al. (Thu,) studied this question.