乡村司法的实践困境及其产生机制——基于冀中W法庭的实地调查

The Practical Dilemma of Rural Justice and its Production Mechanism——A Field Survey Based on the W-Court in Central Hebei

当前乡村司法面临案件激增、判决不合意以及纠纷再生产等多重困境,针对此,法律秩序的构建的形式性被广泛地批判和质疑。通过对一个基层法庭的实地调查,本文认为对基层司法实践的困境应超越对形式化法律局限性的讨论,关注法官和纠纷主体之间的互动以及问题向案件管理转换的抽象化过程。研究发现,当前在纠纷从问题向案件转化的抽象化过程中,法官在其中占据主导地位,对法律程序运作过程所呈现出的私人化个体关怀和情感价值成为连接现实以及形式性之间的缓冲机制;然而由于缺乏制度化的束缚,私人取向的连接机制在行政运动任务过程中被更高效的惯例式方式取代,政治治理目标的驱动削弱了形式化运作的情感增益。两者的共同作用是当前农村司法困境产生的重要因素。

Judicial practice in rural China is currently facing the dilemmas of soaring caseload, dissatisfaction expressed by the litigants and the reproduction of disputes, which have been generally attributed to the failure of formality of legal order. Based on the empirical research in a grassroots tribunal, this study contests that we should pay more attention to the interaction between the judges and the litigants as well as the process of abstraction from problem to case management, rather than simplyascribing these to the limitation of formality. The study argues that, during the abstraction process, the judges play the dominant role by attaching individual meanings and emotional values to this abstraction process. Such practice buffers direct confrontation between the de facto and formality. However, the individualized buffering linkage is usually displaced by routinized processing in which the governmental managerial goals curbed the emotional and cultural inflation of the abstraction. The interplay of the two factors significantly correlates with the existentdilemmas.