The Implement Measures of the Supreme People's Court for Uniform Application of the Law (hereinafter referred to as the Implement Measures) has been discussed and adopted at the 1845th Session of the Judicial Committee of the Supreme People's Court and will come into force on December 1. The background and main contents of the Implement Measures are briefly introduced and explained herein.

　　Uniform application of the law and standard exercise of the discretionary power are important measures for thoroughly studying the legal thoughts of Xi Jinping, are essential requirements for upholding the dignity and authority of the national unification of legal system, and are specific actions for implementing the judicial responsibility system, strengthening supervision over the judicial activities, and guaranteeing the right and legal exercise of adjudicative right involved in the fourth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee.

　　On May 29, 2020, the General Secretary Xi Jinping made clear requirements for the uniform application of laws when presiding over the 20th group study session of the Political Bureau. At the beginning of 2021, the Central politics and law committee included "improving the uniform mechanism for the application of laws" in the task list of ten key reform measures in the field of politics and law in 2021, making it clear that the Supreme People's Court will take the lead in implementing it. Uniform application of the law and standard exercise of the discretionary power are related to protection of parties' legitimate rights and interests and the realization of social fairness and justice. As the country's highest judicial organ, the Supreme People's Court shall give full play to the demonstration role in driving the work of uniform application of laws, focus on solving the specific problems in the application of laws in the judicial work, in particular, problems for which different judicial departments of the Supreme People's Court and different courts have different views on law application and different standards of adjudication.

　　The leading Party group of the Supreme People's Court has always attached great importance to the uniform application of laws. President Zhou Qiang has made clear requirements on many occasions, and Executive Vice President He Rong has presided over meetings of relevant departments on many occasions to study, deploy, and promote the uniform application of laws and standardize the exercise of discretion. In recent years, the Supreme People's Court has issued The Fifth Five-Year Reform Program of the People's Court, The Implement Measures on further implementing judicial system, The Implement Measures on deepening the comprehensive supplementary reforms of the judicial responsibility system and many other documents about judicial reform, and all of them put the improvement of uniform application of law as their primary task and work requirement. The Supreme People’s Court also has formulated a number of normative judicial documents to standardize the uniform application of laws and exercise of the discretionary power from the perspective of guiding the individual work of the trial business of courts at all levels across the country.

　　In order to further implement the deployment of the CPC Central Committee on strengthening the team construction of political science and law, continue to consolidate and deepen the education rectification results of the first court team, promote the education of the second batch of court team, pinpoint the embodiment of deep-rooted problems, and highlight the achievement of establishing rules and regulations, the Supreme People's Court needs to take the further lead to formulate a systematic document on the overall work of standardizing and unifying the application of law from the operational implement level. The basic orientation of the Implement Measures is to establish a standardized and unified working system in the Supreme People's Court, improve the working mechanism of the uniform application of laws at the court level, promote the formation of joint working force, standardize the exercise of discretionary power of judges, and properly solve the problem of differences in law application.

　　The Implement Measures consists of 20 articles, which mainly involve five aspects. First, it stipulates the contents of the work of uniform  application of the law in general, reaffirms the basic requirements for handling case, formulating judicial interpretation, and issuing cases from the perspective of uniform application of laws, so as to ensure the full play of the normative and guiding role of judicial interpretations and cases. Second, it further makes the situation and scope of case class retrieval clear, clarifies the specification of retrieval instructions or reports of case class, strengthens the system requirements of case class retrieval, and promotes the “same judgment of case class” Third, it further clarifies and supplements the scope of cases discussed by conference of professional judges of various departments. At the same time, the mechanism of conference of professional judges across departments has been established and improved to study and resolve divergences in the application of laws across departments or major issues in the application of laws across fields, so as to provide professional advice for judges in handling difficult and complex cases. Fourth, we will innovate the mechanism for solving specific application of laws, and improve the timeliness and convenience of the guidance of judicial rules through the way of resolution of application of the law by judicial committees Fifth, it clarifies the requirements for building a platform for the uniform application of laws and a corresponding database of cases, raises the level of scientific and technological application in unifying the application of laws and standardizing the exercise of discretionary power, and solves the problems of judges in practice, involving retrieving too much information about invalid cases to summarize and refer.

　　1. Clarifies the circumstances and scope of compulsory case retrieval for case class of the Supreme People's Court. Article 6 of the Implement Measures requires that the Supreme People's Court, when hearing cases, except for those cases that should be retrieved according to the Guiding Opinions on the Retrieval of Case class, “four types of cases” stipulated in Several Opinions of the Supreme People's Court on Improving the Judicial Responsibility System of the People's Courts and the Guiding Opinions of the Supreme People's Court on Further Improving the Supervision and Management Mechanism of the “Four Types of Cases”, lawsuit filed in a protest by a prosecutorial office, and ruling cases submitted by the parties, the defenders and agents AD litem or cases of which the claims are supported by the effective judgment for case class by the Supreme People's Court, shall perform case class retrieval, so as to strengthen the supervision and management of "four types of cases", to response to the parties’ expectation, and to ensure that the divergences of application of laws won’t appear between the judges of the Supreme People's Court.

　　In the process of drafting, as to whether it is necessary to expand the circumstances in which case class retrieval should be carried out, some people believe that the circumstances in which case class retrieval should be carried out have already been stipulated by the system, so there is no need to expand them to increase the workload of judges. In the process of formulation, the following considerations were taken into account :(1) "four types of cases" are the key cases that the people's courts need to implement supervision and management; (2) The Guiding Opinions on the Retrieval of Class-case needs to be clarified because it is not clear enough about whether the retrieval of class-case should be carried out for "four types of cases” and the conclusion that class-case retrieval should be carried out can only be drawn through the inference of relevant systems such as the Guiding Opinions of Conference of Professional Judges; (3) It is widely reviled that for the ruling cases that submitted by the parties, the defenders and agents AD litem or cases of which the claims are supported by the effective judgment for class-case by the Supreme People's Court, the judges either adopt the opinions of class-case submitted by the parties and agents nor clarify the reasons. This needs to be specified.  Finally, the Implementation Measures determines the case types that should be retrieved for class-case on the basis of comprehensively summarizing the existing systems.

　　Article 7 of the Implement Measures requires that the description and report of the retrieval for class-case should be objective and comprehensive, reflecting the retrieval results of class-case. At the same time, it also standardized the style of case retrieval report to ensure that it can fully reflect the process of performing class-case retrieval for the dispute by judges, the different opinions retrieved from the judgment, and the opinions and reasons to be adopted.

　　2. It is clear that the collegial panel should include the uniform standard of application of law in the evaluation of cases. Article 8 of the Implement Measures stipulates that the collegial panel should include the uniform standard of application of law in the evaluation of cases for cases are retrieved in accordance with relevant provisions. At the same time, it stipulates that for the ruling cases that submitted by the parties, the defenders and agents AD litem or cases of which the claims are supported by the effective judgment for class-case by the Supreme People's Court in the process of trial, the collegial panel shall include whether the submitted cases, effective judgments and pending cases belong to class-case or not into the evaluation content. This provision is to prevent the situation that judges ignore the cases submitted by the parties and agents and the effective judgements, and to effectively connect with the requirements of responding to the ruling cases and other cases submitted by the parties and agents as stipulated in Article 10 of the Guiding Opinions on the Retrieval for Class Cases. Finally, a trial mechanism of class-cases reference and uniform application of laws are formed by the collegial panel.

　　3.The circumstances under which cases of the Supreme People's Court are submitted to professional council of judges for discussion are supplemented and clarified. The Guiding Opinions of the Professional Council of Judges stipulate five situations in which the president of a court should be suggested to submit the case to the professional council of judges for discussion, including the cases where the sole-judge bench argues that should be submitted for discussion, the cases where the majority opinion cannot be formed within the collegial panel, and the cases where the judges holding minority opinions deem them need to be submitted for discussion. The Implement Measures makes clarification and supplement on the basis of the above provisions, stipulating that for pending cases of which the judgments to be effective are not consistent with the application of the law to class-case by the Supreme People’s Court, or the pending cases of which the judgment result will form a new standard of application of the law, the collegial panel shall recommend the presiding president convene a professional council of judges to give a full play to the role of professional council of judges in assisting decision making in handling cases, unifying the application of law and strengthening the restriction and supervision.

　　4. Establish and improve the mechanism of inter-departmental professional council of judges of the Supreme People's Court. Article 2 of the Guiding Opinions for professional council of judges issued in January 2021 stipulates that a professional council can be held across professional judicial fields, trial chambers and trial teams when necessary. Since then, many high and intermediate courts have established a mechanism for cross-departmental professional council of judges meeting which has generally achieved good response. In June this year, the Central Leading Group for Judicial System Reform issued the Reform Plan on Improving the Functions of Courts at the trial level at the Four levels, which explicitly required the Supreme People's Court to establish the mechanism of inter-departmental professional council of judges. In trial practice, to some extent, the Supreme People's Court does have inconsistent standards of application of laws in some cases among various judicial departments and circuit courts, and there are still divergences in the application of law in some cases involving criminal and civil elements in various trial fields. In order to implement the deployment of the Leading Group for the Reform of the Central Judicial System and properly resolve the above-mentioned divergences in the application of law, the Implementation Measures formulated this time drew on the excellent experience of some high and intermediate courts. Article 11 stipulates that the Supreme People's Court shall establish and improve the mechanism of inter-departmental professional council of judges to study and resolve cross-departmental divergences in the application of law or cross-field major problems in the application of law. In fact, previously, the administrative division of the Supreme People's Court jointly studies the law application of some administrative cases with the administrative judges of the circuit courts has formed the prototype of the inter-departmental professional council of judges. This time it is further clarified by the institutional provisions. As for the composition, convening, presiding, as well as the connection with the judicial committee and other procedural contents, according to the discussion opinions of the judicial committee, will be refined and clarified after running-in practice.

　　5. Create new mechanisms for solving problems related to the application of specific laws. In addition to judicial interpretation and case guidance, in the existing system, the Judicial Committee of the Supreme People's Court needs to rely on specific cases to resolve divergences in the application of law. The solution method and approach are too single. However, the judicial departments of the Supreme People's Court are not very active in resolving disputes with the application of law through specific cases. In the two years since the Implementation Measures of the Supreme People's Court on Establishing a Mechanism for Resolving Disputes on the Application of Law, few disputes have been settled according to the mechanism. To solve the above problems, the Trial Management Office of the Supreme People's Court explores a new legal settlement mechanism that will be applicable to the divergences settlement.For cases of which the judicial explanation or normative documents are not yet mature, the Implement Measures stipulates that the trial organization research management office should study and hand in the solution to the judicial committee for discussion, and printed and distributed the specification to clarify specific judgment rules in the form of resolutions of the application of laws to clarify specific judgment rules.

　　Up to now, the Trial Management Office of the Supreme People's Court has collected more than 70 clues from various judicial departments on problems such as inconsistent application standards of laws and divergences in judgment of class-cases in trial practice, and has a comprehensive grasp of the inconsistent judgment rules in various trial areas. The Trial Management Office has given priority to the clues that have typical characteristics and organized research, organized and convene cross-department professional council of judges according to the situation, solicited opinions from relevant departments or experts and scholars, and finally formed specific research opinions and solutions and submitted them to the trial committee for discussion. Different from the more systematic and complete judicial interpretation and minutes of judicial work meetings, this mechanism is more likely to be targeted at the key points of divergences. Once a project is researched deeply, it can be submitted for discussion. After a decision is made, the determined judgment rules can be printed and applied. It has the characteristics of simplicity, flexibility and fast, and has a strong pertinence, which is conducive to timely unify the internal judgment.

　　6. It clarifies the Establishment of a platform for uniform application of law of the Supreme People's Court and its database. In order to implement the Main Points of the Judicial Reform of the People's Courts in 2021 and provide guidelines and reference cases for judges to handle cases, according to the needs of the judicial departments of the Supreme People's Court, the Implement Measures stipulates that the Supreme People's Court will establish a platform for the uniform application of laws and its database. The Trial Management Office, Research Office, Institute of Applied Law of China and information Technology Service Center of the People's Court are responsible for the planning, construction, research and development, operation and maintenance, upgrading and improvement of the platform and database according to their respective functions. Based on the judicial resources of the Supreme People's Court, a platform integrating law, judicial interpretation, case retrieval, application and research is built to realize in-depth integration with existing case handling platforms to ensure safety and reliability. After the platform launches, it can provide an accurate and authoritative retrieval system for cases handled by judges of the Supreme People's Court and courts of the whole country, fully mining the value of cases, quickly issuing retrieval reports of class-cases through the combination of intelligent analysis and manual screening, improving the informatization level of the application of uniform law.

　　To solve the problems of the class-case retrieval in the existing platform, such as the lack of intuitive judgment regulation, inaccurate match, and low retrieval efficiency and effectiveness, the Supreme People's Court will timely organize trial division to arrange the effective judgments systematically, extract and compile the rules of judgments, and include the ruling cases issued by the Supreme People's Court, the trial business cases of second instance of judicial service departments, retrial cases, instructions on request, cases implementing supervision of reconsideration, cases discussed by the professional meeting of council of judge, compensation committee, judicial relief, and the judicial committee, and other typical cases with general ruling meaning into the database, so as to facilitate  judges to handle and operate the judicial cases of the Supreme People’s Court.

　　After the Implement Measures is issued, the Supreme People's Court will fully implement it in the judicial work, in order to further promote the uniform application of laws, regulate the exercise of the discretionary power, ensure a fair, efficient trial in accordance with the law, improve the sense of the rule of law for people, and make all efforts to make the people feel fairness and justice in every judicial cases.