People’s Assessors in China’s Political-legal Tradition: Institutional Changes and Developmental Logic

The people’s assessor system is an integral part of China’s political-legal tradition and an extension of the mass line doctrine in judicial practice. It originated from the revolutionary era and continued after the foundation of the People’s Republic of China. Since then, the system has gone through stages of initiation, development, stagnation, and revival. To some extent, the people’s assessor system in China is caught between ideals of judicial democracy and professionalism. The interaction of the two, in turn, has shaped its operation in different periods. In a way, changes of the people’s assessor system reflect the choices of China’s judicial reforms over public opinion and professionalization. This constantly extends and reshapes the political-legal tradition in the new era.