Open Judiciary in a Closed Society

Abstract

This chapter examines the open government initiative and the application of open government principles to the court system in China in order to illustrate what “open judiciary”—and, ultimately, an “open state”—looks like in a relatively closed society. The authors present a comprehensive background of China's open government initiative and related court reform efforts, along with critical analysis of trends in “Guiding Cases” (“GCs”), de facto binding precedents released by the Supreme People's Court (SPC) of China, and subsequent cases (“SCs”) that cite GCs. Drawing on these theoretical and empirical studies, the authors discuss the prospects of leveraging China's open government and open judiciary efforts to develop an open state in the country and identify key factors for promoting open judiciary in other closed societies around the world.