China’s top court pledges more transparency after sharp drop in judgments shared online
- Supreme People’s Court says it will balance legal transparency with privacy protection, after reduced access to court verdicts sparked outcry
- But ‘selective access’ of rulings is likely to remain a barrier, criminal lawyer says
China’s top court has promised to publish more legal decisions online after a controversial move to roll back access to court rulings raised alarm last month.
In Beijing on Sunday, the Supreme People’s Court (SPC) pledged to provide services to the public, experts and scholars for research and legal purposes, according to state news agency Xinhua
It comes a month after the SPC admitted publicly that courts had in recent years reduced the number of uploaded verdicts on China Judgments Online, a website run by the SPC, from 19.2 million in 2020 to 10.4 million in 2022, and just 5.1 million 2023.
The court also announced in December that it would establish two new archives for court rulings that would offer only limited public access, prompting alarm and anger among scholars, lawyers and the public, with many slamming the move as incompatible with the “sunshine judiciary” principle Beijing has promoted.
In its announcement on Sunday, the SPC said the new services were intended to solve problems with the website, including security risks and failures to protect individual rights.
It also said the rights and privacy of individuals would be guarded so that personal information about litigants or companies involved in cases was protected.
Zhu Xiaoding, a Beijing-based criminal lawyer, said the Sunday meeting was an attempt by the top court to correct its own errors after a public outcry.