Mainland judges sample foreign law
Thirty mainland judges have begun studying at City University as part of a programme aimed at widening the experience of the country's judges.
That the oldest of the judges was 46 and most were in their 30s reflected the rapid expansion of the legal system since the opening up of the mainland, said Molly Yan Wei, 30, who presides over intellectual property related appeals in the Hunan High People's Court.
The year-long programme, launched late last month, is a joint arrangement between CityU's School of Law, the National Judges College of the Supreme People's Court of China and the School of Law of Columbia University, in the United States.
'It's quite useful, especially for us,' Judge Yan said. 'Most of the judges here are from the civil division. They take charge of cases involving foreign parties, for example intellectual property cases. Parties from Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan are frequently in front of us ... so it's useful for us to understand another legal system.'
Indeed the programme, which will see successful students awarded a Master of Laws, aims to expose mainland judges to foreign legal systems to strengthen its own.
Stony Ma Xuetao, a 33-year-old judge serving in the administrative law section of the Hainan High People's Court, was looking forward to experiencing the different ways people looked at the law in Hong Kong and the US. 'This is really very important for us because we are learning some new thinking styles,' he said.
The western adversarial approach, with its winners and losers, was slightly different to that adopted in Chinese law, the students said.
'In fact, we are not so familiar with the western approach, but in China our culture is that we do a lot of talking ... we try to achieve the harmonious outcome, so we emphasise a lot of mediation and negotiation.'
