China's top judge Zhou Qiang urges increased role for defence lawyers

China’s top judge Zhou Qiang’s called for lawyers and scholars to work together to reform the legal system, bringing new hope for an end to confrontations between judges and defence lawyers, and an increased role for these lawyers in court. 

Zhou, the new chief of the Supreme People’s Court, raised the issue at a judicial reform panel meeting with legal academics and lawyers last Friday.

Tensions between judges and defence lawyers in China have escalated since last August when the central government introduced a new criminal procedure law proposal that gave judges direct power to punish defence lawyers.

Earlier this month, a Jiangsu courtroom’s arrest of a defence lawyer for disrupting proceedings prompted fellow rights lawyers to stage a protest outside the court and demand the incarcerated lawyer’s immediate release.

“Both the judge’s and lawyer’s roles are important in the legal profession, but widening distrust between them over the years has become troublesome for the country’s legal system,” said Nankai University law professor Hou Xin.

Xu Xin, the director of the Judicial Research Centre of Beijing Institute of Technology, said public prosecutors and defence lawyers should be on an equal legal standing. However, this is often not the case as defence lawyers are often at a disadvantage during a trial, said Tsinghua University professor Zhang Jianwei.