Two New Commentaries and March 30 Conference in Beijing

Two New Commentaries

New Commentary on China’s Case Guidance System: Observations and Lessons Learned

March 2018 marks the beginning of the eighth year of operation of the China Guiding Cases Project (“CGCP”) of Stanford Law School. Established in February 2011, a few months after the Supreme People’s Court (“SPC”) of China issued a set of groundbreaking rules on Guiding Cases (“GCs”)(指导性案例), the CGCP has grown from a project supported by a few Stanford Law School students to one armed with a global team of nearly 200 members and more than 50 advisers. Thanks to its team’s efforts, the CGCP has a website equipped with advanced search functions benefiting nearly 100,000 users around the world and has a strong presence on multiple social media platforms (e.g., LinkedIn, where the CGCP has more than 25,000 followers).

It is time for the project, and for stakeholders interested in supporting more meaningful changes in China’s legal system, to make careful plans for the future. Thus, in a new commentary, CGCP Founder and Director Dr. Mei Gechlik and two members of the project, Chenchen Zhang and Li Huang, share their observations on the developments that have taken place with respect to case guidance in China to date and discuss lessons learned from these developments and the outlook for China’s Case Guidance System (案例指导制度). 

The observations shared by the authors include:

(1) China’s Case Guidance System Goes Beyond Guiding Cases

(2) The Beijing Intellectual Property Court’s (“BIPC”) Reform of the Case Guidance System Has Produced Good Results

(3) China’s Belt and Road (“B&R”) Initiative Has Fueled the Development of the Case Guidance System

As for the outlook for China’s Case Guidance System, the authors write, inter alia:

The Chinese leadership’s recent decision to establish  three courts (one in each of Xi’an, Shenzhen, and Beijing) to handle B&R disputes gives hope that judgments rendered by these specialized courts may eventually be authorized to carry guiding effect, just like how the BIPC has been authorized to implement the IP Case Guidance System to guide the court’s adjudication of intellectual property cases. While it is too early to predict whether a type of  B&R case guidance system will be established in these B&R courts, the success of the BIPC’s experiences in implementing a specialized case guidance system and the growing need for a predictable and transparent dispute settlement mechanism to protect the interests of parties involved in B&R investment projects make the establishment of a type of B&R case guidance system promising. If this happens, experiences from these B&R courts will certainly help take the development of the Case Guidance System to another level.

New Commentary on Guiding Cases and Arbitration

The outlook for Guiding Cases will also look even more promising if they can be effectively applied in arbitration. The CGCP is honored to have Guilherme Rizzo Amaral contribute a significant commentary shedding light on this topic. Drawing on his latest book titled Judicial Precedent and Arbitration: Are Arbitrators Bound By Judicial Precedent? A Comparative Study of UK, US and Brazilian Law and Practice (Wildy, Simmonds & Hill Publishing, 2017), Mr. Amaral shares the following thoughts:

Even though there are marked distinctions between traditional judicial precedents and Guiding Cases, the existing similarities suggest that something may be learned from other jurisdictions’ experiences in dealing with the issue of judicial precedents in arbitration.

Mr. Amaral reviews how judicial precedents affect arbitrations in two jurisdictions with a long track record of adherence to precedent—the United States and the United Kingdom—as well as a civil law country that only recently adopted a precedent-like system, Brazil. Based on some important features of Chinese arbitration, Mr. Amaral concludes:

[…] it is my contention that arbitrators should follow Guiding Cases to provide predictability and legal certainty, thereby contributing to the development of arbitration and of the rule of law in China.

Check here to see how he came to this conclusion.

Conference in Beijing on March 30, 2018 – Thank you for your support!!

Thanks to your support, the conference titled “China’s Case Guidance System and Belt & Road Initiative: Practical Insights and Prospects” that the CGCP will host on Friday, March 30, 2018 at the Stanford Center at Peking University in Beijing is expected to have a full house!  You are still welcome to sign up (http://web.stanford.edu/~jaingram/request-for-a-seat-20180330-conference.fb) to be placed on our wait list.  If more seats become available, we will assign them according to the wait list.   

This conference will serve as a critical platform for diverse and distinguished legal experts to share their insights about China’s Guiding Cases, cases related to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and related legal developments in the country, and to discuss their prospects and related action plans. 

Confirmed speakers include Judge William Fletcher (U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit), former Chief Judge Toshiaki Iimura (Japan’s IP High Court), Judge SU Chi (Former President of the Beijing Intellectual Property Court; Director of the Intellectual Property Case Guidance Research (Beijing) Base of the Supreme People's Court), and Chief Judge Diane Wood (U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit), as well as distinguished legal practitioners from the Silk Road Fund, Boeing Corporation, Microsoft, Tencent, and large international law firms. The three foreign judges will preside over a mock trial to illustrate how cases can be effectively applied or distinguished in practice.

We look forward to welcoming you and more than 150 attendees who have already secured their seats, including Chinese judges, lawyers, academics, and other experts. 

For more information about the panels scheduled and the full list of confirmed speakers, please visit the CGCP website at https://cgc.law.stanford.edu/event/20180330-conference-in-beijing. 

Interested in Getting Involved with the CGCP?

Are you interested in volunteering for the CGCP?  Including legal and graduate students as well as distinguished legal professionals from around the world, CGCP members play an important role in organizing CGCP events and producing our high-quality bilingual products. For more information about how you can join the CGCP Team, please visit https://cgc.law.stanford.edu/get-involved/volunteer/. We look forward to working with you!

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Since its establishment in February 2011 to help China establish a more transparent and accountable judiciary, the CGCP has shared significant insights about the country’s Guiding Cases and related developments, including the Belt and Road Initiative. To continue receiving these insights, please subscribe to our mailing list here.

A significant source of our funding is individual donors. Please make a gift to us today and become part of our mission. Thank you for your support!

The CGCP thanks our sponsors, including Alston & Bird LLP, Broad & Bright, the Center for East Asian Studies of Stanford University, Dentons LLP, China Fund of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies of Stanford University, the Fu Tak Iam Foundation Limited, Gridsum Holding Inc., the McManis Wigh China Foundation, and Tencent Research Institute for their kind and generous support.