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Law Reports
Official Publication
The legal system of China is considered part of the Continental Legal System, and court decisions are not the source of Chinese law and do not have the legal binding effect in judicial practices, which is different from that of Anglo-American legal system. But some publications, including judicial reports in both official and commercial editions, have been published since 1990 for the purpose of instructing the work of lower courts and procuratorates. The major official ones are the Selected Cases of the People’s Court (People’s Court Press, 1992-, Quarterly) and the Series of Criminal Cases (China Procuratorial Press, 1991).The former, compiled by the China’s Applied Law Institute, are subject to the authorization of the Supreme People’s Court and are published regularly. They consist of many big and puzzling cases involving criminal, civil, economic, administrative, marine ones. The cases compiled are usually chosen from the courts of all levels and special courts, and each case is composed of three parts, including fact of case, adjudication, theoretical analysis and experiences and lessons, which plays an important role in directing courts to hear the similar cases. Its bound edition, Selected Cases of the People’s Court: 1992-1999 (China Legal System Press, 2000), incorporates the reported cases into seven volumes, covering respectively criminal, civil, commercial, intellectual property, maritime, transportation, administrative and state compensation cases. The latter, containing about 6,000 cases selected from those prosecuted by the national procuratorial institutions at deferent levels since 1979, when the Penal Code was enacted, has been published in 23 chapters, and the cases, selected from about 100 crimes, were classified into scores of titles and each chapter includes several cases.
Gazette of the Supreme People’s Court of the People’s Republic of China is another authoritative source in respect to the court decision. Each issue carries several leading cases. In order to bring into fully play the directive role of typical cases, the Editorial Department of the Gazette edited a case book, A Complete Collection of Leading Cases From the Gazette of the Supreme People’s Court: 1985.1-1999.2 (Police Officer Press, 1999), which contains about 300 cases that have appeared in the Gazette during the period 1985-1999.
In recent years, some local courts at the provincial level have also compiled case books for the purpose of improving the trial quality of basic courts and the ability of judges to handle specific cases, and to raise the scholastic levels of judges. So, a number of local law reports have been published one by one, such as:
•Selected Cases Adjudicated in the Courts of Guangdong Province (Guangdong People’s Press, 1997);
•Selected Cases Decided by the Courts of Qingdao City (Law Press, 2001);
•Selected Cases Tried by the Courts of Tianjin Municipality (Law Press, 2001);
•Noted Cases Adjudged by the Courts of Beijing Municipality (Law Press, 2001);
•Annotated Cases Handled by the Courts of Hebei Province (Law Press, 2001).
Among the local case publications which deserve to be praised is the case book series entitled Selected Cases Adjudicated in the Courts of Shanghai (Shanghai People’s Press, 1994-date, yearly). Published under the direction of the Higher People’s Court of Shanghai, each year it includes about 100 or more cases selected carefully from more than 600 cases recommended by different levels of courts in Shanghai. These cases cover a wide range of dimensions and are typical in each type of cases. They reflect the new types of cases appeared in recent years’ social, economic and legal transactions.
Judicial Document Selections of the People’s Court (Law Press, 2001-date) is another official series of court judgments which consists of a dozens chapters including the full text of written judgments, awards and mediation documents selected by the higher people’s court of provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government.
English Version
Presently, most of law reports are still available in Chinese only, but case publications in English have already emerged and will continue to grow. The higher people’s court of Shanghai municipality, for example, in 1999 compiled a Chinese-English Edition case book, Protection of Intellectual Property Rights cases and Comments (Law press, 1999). This book includes a dozen typical cases on intellectual property, some noted cases about copyright disputes are reported, such as:
•Wu Guanzhong v. Shanghai Duoyunxuan & Hong Kong Yongcheng;
•Qian Zhongshu and People’s Literature Press v. Xu Zhifen and Sichuan Literature &Art Press;
•Feng Chuyin et al. (successors of Zhang Leping) v. Jiangsu Sanmao Group Inc.
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