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Law And Discretion In The Contemporary Chinese Courts, Margaret Y. K. Woo

Margaret Y. K. Woo

This article examines the three types of judicial discretion that exists in any legal system – fact based discretion; self-interested discretion, and ideological discretion -- in the context of China. Through its procedural laws, the Chinese legal system demonstrated a continuing preference for informality and flexibility. While concept of supervision and the procedure of adjudication supervision are efforts to constrain fact-based and self-serving personal discretion, the concept of “supervision” is also a window to ensure ideological compliance in individual judicial work.