Legislation can be judicially interpreted without a specific case necessarily before the court. These interpretations provide lawyers, judges and researchers with invaluable information on the state of a legal issue or a disputed area of law.
As with most civil law jurisdictions, judgments play a minimal role in subsequent judicial proceedings. Decisions are typically short. They list the arguments from each side, factual findings and the judgment. They rarely cite cases, and often do not refer to legislation. Higher courts are, however, more likely to explain their application of the law.
The current Chinese legal system does not formally recognise cases or judicial precedents as a source of law. However, in practice, cases are often cited as persuasive authority and some courts follow judicial precedents to decide issues when statutes are vague. In particular certain decisions of the Supreme People's Court that can be read as generating legal norms have binding effect on lower courts.
Luo, Wei, Chinese law and legal research (Hein, 2005) 105
As well as judgments (also called 'court opinions') the Supreme People's Court also provides guiding opinions / cases, which are considered highly persuasive. These opinions provide researchers with invaluable information on the state of a legal issue or a disputed area of law. The SPC started issuing guiding cases in 2011. These are selected from SPC judgments and other courts throughout the country. As at March 2017, there have been 87 cases designated as guiding. See Stanford Law School China Guiding Cases Project's website for English translations of:
Guiding Cases are published in the monthly SPC Gazette. They are available on the following databases:
