| Abstract: | On November 23, 2014, the Humanities and Social Sciences Forum of China, hosted by Renmin University of China and organized by Renmin Law School, was held in Yifu Conference Room of Renmin University of China. The theme of the forum is “China’s Rule of Law: Move Forward the Modernization of Regulatory Institutions and Regulatory Capacities of China.” The purpose of the forum is to further implement practices according to the spirits of the Fourth Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and to modernize the country’s regulatory institutions. Professor XIAO Yang, the former Chief Justice of the Supreme People’s Court of China, has delivered a keynote speech on “The Reform of the Judicial System in China Is Confronted with a Crucial Period of Strategic Opportunities.” He stated that currently China was experiencing a complicated and diversified period of transformation and that the rule of law should become a social consensus. To rule the country by law, first and foremost, it is critical to do so according to the Constitution; and to administer the country by law, it is essential to administer according to the Constitution. Good law and governance are the two basic aspects of the rule of law and should have a benign interaction in practice. Additionally, the top-level plans shall first be well-designed based upon the spirits of the Fourth Plenum and the constitutional rules, and then the judicial reforms shall be actively, smoothly, and gradually carried out according to the plans. This has become a new model of legal construction. Moreover, the relations among the various aspects shall be resolved correctly. Those aspects include the judicial systematic reforms and the working institutional reforms, the protection of judicial authority and the enhancement of supervision over governance, the relations among different interest groups from the long-term development perspective, and the systematic and cultural constructions of the law. Finally, he emphasized that the rule of law needed faith and dream and wished to see more young people to inherit the dream of the rule of law. |
