Judge Ma Laike's professional career is one full of mounting
challenges these days.
As
a judge dealing with intellectual property right cases with the
Beijing No 1 Intermediate People's Court, Ma's days in the
courtroom are filled with ground-breaking cases, the result of a
new breed of crime in China.
"The new types of cases are difficult to handle because of
loopholes in existing laws and because of our insufficient
knowledge on specific subject matters," said Ma.
More than two decades after China restored its legal system, Ma,
together with thousands of other Chinese judges, is being
confronted with an increasing number of cases that have never
appeared on their desks before.
According to sources with the Supreme People's Court, such cases
include civil compensation cases involving fraudulent information
disclosure on the securities market and crimes committed via
computers and system networks.
Disputes over the ownership of software and biotechnology, improper
registration of domain names, anti-dumping and countervailing
crimes have also been on the rise.
To
tackle these challenges, the Supreme People's Court has set itself
a goal to arm judges with a wealth of expertise on a variety of
legal matters and a wide range of other matters, including the
basics of economics and finance and foreign language skills.
"Judges must have a broad range of knowledge," said Zheng
Chengliang, deputy president of the National Judges College, "a
judge equipped with legal knowledge alone cannot be a good
judge."
Zheng's college, responsible for in-service training of the
nation's judges, has taken note of the changes and paid close
attention to lecturing judges to ensure they have an expanded
knowledge of all things pertaining to modern law.
According to Wang Juan, deputy head of the college's department in
charge of training, lectures and seminars have been arranged in the
past few years on highly discussed economic and financial issues as
well as on intellectual property rights protection concerning
software products.
Apart from its own professors, the college also invites guest
speakers from other universities, governmental departments and
foreign countries to give lectures.
The college has also put a special focus on teaching judges to
analyze and understand the philosophy of laws, a necessary skill in
a time when judges are faced with an increasing number of new cases
that are not specifically stipulated in existing laws.
Compared with the courts in the western regions of China,
economically advanced coastal regions are more prone to seeing new
types of cases emerge.
A
high number of judges in these regions must now turn to specialists
for advice in handling these types of cases.
(China Daily February 18, 2003)