Abstract

From 2011 to 2016, the Law Institute and the Center for Studies of National Indices of the Rule of Law of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences launched a series of indices of judicial transparency and, by relying on a scientific and comprehensive index system, conducted quantitative assessments of judicial openness of courts and procuratorates, and used concrete data to measure and explain judicial transparency in China. The assessments show that, with the help of information technology, Chinese courts and procuratorates have increased their judicial transparency in an all-round way and realized the online disclosure of information about judicial affairs, the social sharing of adjudicative and procuratorial documents, the active pushing of information about process nodes, the remote visualization of court trial, and the transparency of evaluation and auction. While making the above achievements, China has also been faced with some bottlenecks in the development of judicial transparency, including repetitive construction of platforms, low accuracy of disclosed information, paid disclosure of information, low quality of data disclosure, and lack of transparency of judicial reform. In the future, with the continuous optimization of the application of informatization, China should carry out public-oriented top-level design of the system of judicial openness, construct intensive platforms, gradually establish a mechanism for the disclosure of information upon application, abandon the outdated thinking of using public information to make profit, introduce judicial openness remedy mechanism, and set up judicial big data.