This was posted over the weekend and is interesting for two reasons
A) The fact that judges seem now to have absolutely no knowledge of the law in order to rule on cases
B) (probably more interesting) social media in China has picked up on the appointment and is running with it
Here’s the piece………
Legal Experts – and a Court – Blast Bureaucrat’s Appointment to Bench
Wang Zhongyi does not have the credentials to head a city court in Zhejiang Province, at least according to insiders and experts
By staff reporter Ouyang Yanqin
(Beijing) – A low court in the capital and legal experts have questioned the recent appointment of a bureaucrat with seemingly few credentials to head a court in the eastern province of Zhejiang.
Wang Zhongyi, 49, secretary of the Communist Party committee in the government of Pingyang, a county under Wenzhou in Zhejiang, is one of the eight officials whose names were published by the provincial government on September 22 in a promotion announcement.
Wang will become the president of the Intermediate People’s Court in Taizhou, a city near Wenzhou, according to the announcement. The government says the public has until September 29 to voice its opinions about the appointments, and after that they will be final.
A court in Fangzhuang, in a rural district of Beijing called Fengtai, immediately raised a series of questions about Wang’s qualifications on its account on Sina Weibo, the country’s answer to Twitter.
Its questions were: “Does being the president of an intermediate court require work experience in a court before? If someone is directly appointed to be a judge and a member on a trial committee without training in basic legal theories or any experience in practicing laws, is he allowed to voice his opinions during the discussion of a case?”
It also asked: “Should the president of a court participate in the handling of a case and is he capable of that?”
The court deleted the posts on September 23, but lawyers and legal experts are still asking questions.
Lawyer Deng Shulin said he has requested that the personnel department of Zhejiang’s party committee review the case because Wang is not qualified. He said he was told that Wang had passed the country’s bar exam, one reason officials thought he is fit for the position.
Publicly available materials show that at age 21 Wang graduated from a two-year program in policing at a vocational school in Wenzhou. He spent the next 15 years in the city’s security bureau, then worked in various administrative capacities in the city government and counties under it.
Wang has also studied economics and management through a correspondence course offered by the Central Party School, the party’s highest training center, and completed a graduate program at the Zhejiang party school.
Neither of these qualifications means Wang has the kind of degree required to become a court president, said Zhang Jiansheng, a law professor at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou.
The law requires that the president and vice president of a court must be selected from the best judges or those with the qualifications of being a judge, Zhang said, meaning Wang should at least have a bachelor’s degree in law from an accredited institution of higher education or he must have two years of experience practicing law.
The courses Wang took at party schools do not give him such a degree, Zhang said, and his work in Wenzhou’s security bureau and in the government was not about the law.
(Rewritten by Wang Yuqian)
