China uses technology in judicial reforms

Among all the arms of the government in India, perhaps the one most antiquated, both in terms of use of technology and application of process re-engineering, is the judiciary. In fact, very little of the "information revolution" that has touched all other aspects of life has influenced the country's legal system. And the result is an almost antediluvian system which fails to deliver on its objectives. And very little discussion about serious reforms.

For lessons, it needs to look no far than what neighbour China has done. 

China has livestreamed more than 2.4m trials since introducing the technology in 2016. It also has three online courts, in Hangzhou and Beijing, which have opened in the past two years, while another court in Shanghai has an online mediation platform to resolve disputes before they go to trial. There is also a “central” online mediation platform, with more than 1,400 Chinese courts listed... “You [can] just turn on a computer to complete an entire legal procedure,” he said. “You don’t have to have internet-based evidence notarised any more ... for example, if you find a pirated copy of a movie online, you only need to [screenshot] the page.” On the other hand, livestreamed hearings and trials were intended as a way of educating the public, he added. “By showing how [judges] rule on one case, it tells the public what the court’s attitude is towards those types of case.”... China is forging ahead with applications that are replacing lawyers’ functions and even assisting judges. “Many courts are using smart ruling systems [that] categorise and analyse previous cases to help judges draft their verdicts,” said Mr Zhang. For similar, repetitive types of case, some of those systems can be “very reliable”.

And it seems to have done this by channeling private enterprise,

According to new figures from Thomson Reuters, the number of patents related to legal technology, or “lawtech”, filed globally has risen more than fourfold over the past five years, from 202 in 2013 to 933 last year. More than half — 51 per cent — were filed in China last year, while 23 per cent were filed in the US and 11 per cent in South Korea. Western law firms and other legal service providers tend to concentrate on how to automate their operations in the name of efficiency and cost savings, not least because their biggest clients — corporate legal departments — are insisting on lower bills. By contrast, Chinese innovators are more focused on ordinary citizens, with courts now livestreaming trials — from traffic incidents and small financial disputes to drug offences and theft — and enabling claimants to file cases, submit evidence and resolve disputes online. More sensitive issues, including anything deemed to involve national security, are kept away from public scrutiny.

Clearly this is a very impressive achievement. Like with other areas, the impressive achievement is with figuring out solutions, their effective execution within a finite time, and with channeling private entrepreneurship. 

There are perhaps two ways of engaging on this. One is public production of solutions - government agencies make the solutions and implement them. The other option is publicly co-ordinated private production - co-ordinate the market to engage with them problem and develop a solution eco-system.  

The exemplar of the former was the erstwhile Soviet Union. Most developed countries of today addressed many of their basic plumbing challenges largely through public production. China is clearly an example of the latter. It appears to have perfected the use of industrial policy to co-ordinate private enterprise even into some of the most difficult areas for private engagement. This is the case of industrial policy to both address a critical plumbing issue as well as catalysing a market. And this is what makes its achievement exceptional.