Caught between Professionalism and Populism: A Big-Data Analysis of the Lay Participation System in China

One of the most noteworthy recent trends in judicial reforms worldwide has been the resurgence of lay participation. Several jurisdictions, including Russia, Spain and Japan, have introduced laypersons into their judicial processes. With more than 70 percent of ordinary procedural cases handled by lay assessors, China is a notable, yet severely understudied, example of this global trend. Drawing on descriptive big-data analysis of 23 million court decisions from 2014-2016, this article offers one of the first systematic examinations of the People's Assessor System in China. It identifies a tendency for lay assessors to be used for routine cases without political significance, and the coexistence of an expert model and layman model in everyday justice. Resorting to historical and comparative analysis, we devise a novel typology to explain the China case. The tensions between the competing demands of professionalism and populism during the past few decades has created intriguing contradictions in the system, with the result that lay participation in China both facilitates and constrains judicial decisions.