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Two Sides of Court Mediation in Today’s Southwest Grassroots China: an Empirical Study in T Court, Yunnan Province

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2014

XIONG Hao
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Abstract

Court mediation is now playing a crucial role in the Chinese legal system. Based on two case studies in Yunnan Province, this paper examines how court mediation works in Southwest China. It finds that court mediation can expand the capacity of the court concerning case acceptance, and is capable of fixing multicentre disputes and complicated social problems. However, the paper also points out that when encountering some ill-suited cases, justice may be undermined and the judge’s role may be confused. Therefore, it is necessary to pass some law to exclude the ill-suited cases from the mediation track when promoting court mediation in Southwest China.

Keywords

court mediationSouthwest Chinaempirical studylocal legal ecologyregionalism
Type
Research Article
Information
Asian Journal of Law and Society , Volume 1 , Issue 2 , November 2014 , pp. 367 - 394
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press and KoGuan Law School, Shanghai Jiao Tong University 

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Footnotes

*

Xiong Hao, PhD (HKU), Fulbright Scholar (Harvard Law School, 2011–12). His research interests include ADR and interdisciplinary legal studies. The author is grateful to Professor Zhao Yun (HKU), Professor William Alford (Harvard), Professor Sally Falk Moore (Harvard), Professor Michael Palmer (SOAS), Professor Fu Hualing (HKU), and Professor Shahla F. Ali (HKU) for their comments and suggestions to the research. The author also thanks the editorial staff of the Asian Journal of Law and Society for their outstanding comments and editing. This paper is one chapter of the author’s completed PhD dissertation. The author’s email address is bearhow@gmail.com.

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