What lessons should we learn from the "fall of several justices"?
Wang Shengjun, president of the Supreme People's Court, recently pointed out at the meeting of presidents of the National Higher People's Court that the focus of people's court reform is to solve outstanding problems that affect judicial justice and efficiency, especially where judicial corruption is prone to occur. He said that in recent years, many justices and senior judges have been removed from office, which has seriously jeopardized the judicial credibility and learned a profound lesson. As the chief justice of China, Wang Shengjun, the president of the Supreme People's Court, publicly analyzed the sensitive issue of "several justices have fallen off the horse", which fully demonstrated the courage of the judiciary to face up to corruption and the firm determination and confidence to promote the reform of the people's courts and the judicial system. According to incomplete statistics, there are many judges and senior judges involved in corruption in recent years, such as Tian Fengqi, former president of Liaoning Provincial High Court; Mai Chongkai, former president of Guangdong Provincial High Court; Wu Zhenhan, former president of Hunan Provincial High Court; Xu Yandong, former president of Shenyang Intermediate People's Court; Jia Yongxiang, former president of Wuhan Intermediate People's Court; Tang Jikai, former vice president of Changsha Intermediate People's Court; and Shang Jun, Liu Jiayi and Zhang Zimin, former three presidents of Fuyang Intermediate People's Court. Not long ago, Huang Songyou, former vice president of the Supreme People's Court and second-class judge, was also "double-regulated" on suspicion of auction fraud and accepting huge bribes. Compared with many countries with developed rule of law, judges, especially justices and senior judges, are rarely involved in corruption. In some places, judges have almost become a "high-risk group of corruption", which is alarming and thought-provoking. Justice is the last line of defense of social justice, and the judge is the highest patron saint of this line of defense. Strictly speaking, a judge is not an ordinary "official" and the president of the court is not an ordinary "leader". Compared with officials in other fields who engage in corruption, judges and court presidents often use their power to engage in corrupt transactions, which will only be worse in nature and more harmful to social justice and the interests of the masses. Therefore, we should learn from the corruption cases of senior judges such as Huang Songyou, Tian Fengqi and Mai Chongkai, and it is even more necessary to further promote the reform of people's courts and judicial system, and explore ways to prevent and control judge corruption and judicial corruption from the system and source. In view of the problem that judges' corruption seriously endangers the judicial credibility, Wang Shengjun stressed the need to strengthen the supervision of power, and strengthen the supervision of leading bodies, leading cadres, key departments and key positions in courts at all levels, especially the supervision of key links such as the exercise of judicial power and executive power, the selection and appointment of cadres, the arrangement of major projects, the use of large amounts of funds, and capital construction. Supervising power with power, restricting power with power, and taming power to prevent corruption should be a direction of people's court reform in the next step. The Supreme People's Court recently put forward ten tasks for the judicial reform of the courts next year, including establishing and improving a trial management system with clear powers and responsibilities, mutual cooperation, mutual restraint and efficient operation, reforming and improving the unified management and coordinated execution system of people's courts, further implementing the principle of separating trial from execution, standardizing execution procedures and improving execution efficiency. It embodies the idea that judicial organs can effectively prevent and punish judicial corruption by deepening internal reform, perfecting and perfecting management system, supervision system and execution system. At the same time, it must be noted that the reform of the judicial system is part of the reform of the political system. To make real progress, on the one hand, it needs to adapt to the overall level of political system reform, on the other hand, it needs to be coordinated and promoted by other parts of political system reform. Take Wang Shengjun's emphasis on "strengthening supervision over power" as an example. In addition to strengthening the supervision and restriction of power within the judicial system, is it necessary to introduce the supervision and restriction of power outside the judicial system? For example, the person in charge of the Executive Board of the Supreme People's Court recently said that some powerful departments and people with special status have become the focus of the court's "enforcement difficulties" in recent years, including some government agencies and enterprises with NPC deputies and CPPCC members as legal representatives, who use their strong position and special status to hinder and resist court enforcement. However, as the relevant parties said in response to this matter, in many cases, the judiciary is actually a strong department, and judges like Huang Songyou and Tian Fengqi also have special status. If they want to hinder or resist external supervision and control, it will also cause another kind of "implementation difficulty." Whether it is the "execution difficulty" faced by the court or the "execution difficulty" faced by the court, it is necessary to form a joint force of governance and find a solution through multi-field and multi-faceted system reform. In a word, from the phenomenon of "several judges falling off the horse" analyzed by Justice Wang Shengjun, we should draw a painful and profound lesson as the pressure and motivation to unswervingly promote the reform of judicial system and political system.