The Right to a Fair Trial in China: The Criminal Procedure Law of 1996
Over a decade ago, the promulgation of the 1996 Criminal Procedure Law drastically improved the criminal justice system in China by introducing some key rights and procedural safeguards for criminal defendants. Unfortunately, in practice many of the rights introduced lacked real substance. The reforms were intended to introduce aspects of the adversarial system of justice to the historically inquisitorial system, however the safeguards introduced lacked the necessary guarantees to ensure compliance and the right to a fair trial is still far from a reality for China’s criminal defendants.
The Plight of China's Criminal Defence Lawyers
This article describes and analyses the problems of China's criminal defence lawyers in gaining access to and representing detained clients during the investigation, indictment and trial stages of the criminal process, with brief reference to problems at the appeal and post-conviction stages. The article also discusses the harassment and intimidation suffered by defence counsel who live under threat of prosecution for waging too vigorous defences and who are subject to other restraints and sanctions. It concludes with some suggestions for foreign co-operation with and support for these embattled but essential lawyers in China.
Corpus Linguistics in Legal Discourse
There are many different ways in which modern Corpus Linguistics can be used to enrich and broaden our understanding of legal discourse. Based on the central principle of co-occurrence and co-selection in language construction, this paper reviews current applications of Corpus Linguistics in the area of legal discourse focusing on issues ranging from phraseology, variation in legal discourse, legal translation, register and genre perspectives on legal discourse, legal discourse in forensic contexts to evaluative language in judicial settings. It revisits the notion of ‘corpus’ and it highlights the relevance of various types of legal corpora and computer tools in legal linguistic research.