Chinese have developed an indifference to news about corrupt officials and the shuffle of provincial leaders. But despite this, the "double designation" of top judges in the Shenzhen middle court is still shocking to many ("double designation" is a formal request by the government for an explanation and confession by an accused official at a specific place on a specific date- Ed.). It is terrifying to imagine if even a few are found guilty of what they are accused of.
Who should oversee the legal system? Judges currently supervise themselves-- to them, this is not absurd, as it is similar to how confucian scholars upheld the ethical codes of caution and blamelessness themselves. But western judicial communities stress independence and isolation; for example, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cordoza has very few friends, is unmarried, and leads the life of the reclusive scholar. Of course, this is an exceptional case, as that kind of life could not reasonably be expected from all judges. However, it is reasonable to expect that they do not act in ways that call into question the government's credibility. Judges are the personification of law.
Shenzhen's judges spent time nearly every day with the manager of an auction house. They would oftentimes leave work to drink. When they returned to their chambers, belching, did they ever stop to feel their robes, to wonder why they traded the uniform of a soldier for it?
The media should supervise the courts. When self-regulation fails, external supervision becomes absolutely necessary. If the media is entrusted by the public, then supervision by the media is equivalent to supervision by the public. Even in America, where the justice system is regarded highly, media supervision is not superfluous; in 1988, a Kansas paper released an investigative report revealing that judges hearing an IPO case had actually owned stock themselves.
This year, the Shenzhen judges received repeated inquiries from the media over their wide-ranging corruption. Regrettably, however, it was not the media who ferreted them out in the first place. Due to our limited field of vision, there still has not been a single corrupt judge exposed by the media.
The system must also supervise the courts. The moment that the article was printed in Kansas, a high-level investigation into the judge's conflict of interests was started. The U.S. Congress even held a public hearing to discuss possible measures to prevent future conflicts of interest from emerging in their sacred courts.
In 1998, the Chinese government sought to "promote a clean and honest government and ensure fairness in justice", promulgating a law exploring methods to investigate breaches of ethical conduct in the courts. The Shenzhen judges were quite familiar with this widely publicized document, yet eight years later, they still failed to live up to it. And not just one, but several of them.
Eight years later we still have no statistics or proof to tell us exactly how pervasive this misconduct is elsewhere in the judicial system. We have no way of knowing wither it has increased or decreased over time. What we do know is that the justice system requires more oversight and to continue to progress. In this sense, we must in one respect study the west.
We cannot set our hopes too high and seek to root out corruption from all courts. But, at the very minimum, we must ensure that judges resembling the previously praised and popular Shenzhen gang are not themselves corrupt.
