First of all, strictly abide by the provisions of the current laws and judicial interpretations on the trial period. It should be noted that a large number of civil cases tried every year are converted into ordinary cases through summary procedures, or the trial period is extended or even exceeded. In China's Civil Procedure Law and related judicial interpretations, the time limit for hearing simple cases is three months, and that for ordinary cases is six months. The time limit for some special cases is a legal time standard based on respecting the objective laws of trial and fully considering the rigor of procedures and the complexity of cases. The people's court, as a judicial organ with laws to abide by, should not arbitrarily exceed the time limit prescribed by law, but should strictly abide by the provisions of laws and relevant judicial interpretations on acceptance, notification of responding, trial, judgment and service. The president of the people's court should also strictly control the power of examination and approval to extend the trial time limit, and the special right given by law to the presidents of courts at all levels to extend the trial time limit for solving particularly difficult and complicated cases cannot be taken as a general measure.
Secondly, pay attention to the reasonable division of civil trial work. Rational division of labor is an effective way to reduce work cost and improve efficiency. Although through the reform of trial mode, scientific measures such as the separation of trial and trial, the burden of proof of the parties and the separate sequence management of the clerks have been realized, which has effectively improved the trial efficiency. However, we should also see that the internal responsibilities of judges are unclear and the division of labor is unclear. Today, there are still many civil judges in the court, who are responsible for everything from serving materials, preserving property, arranging hearings, mediating, making transcripts and legal documents, to sentencing, filing and filing. This situation greatly distracts the judges' energy, making them unable to concentrate on the trial and judgment of cases, which not only affects the quality of cases, but also inevitably affects the efficiency of handling cases. How to solve it? First of all, the court itself should intensify the reform, clarify the division of responsibilities between the clerk and the judge, the executive and the logistics personnel, and resolutely put aside matters that should not be the responsibility of the judge, such as delivery, property preservation, recording, filing and filing, and carry out them by special personnel. At the same time, within the judges, the relationship between mediation and judgment should be clearly defined. We can try to set up a mediation team in a civil court, and a special mediator will mediate. In this way, it can solve the contradiction that the judges who used to unify mediation and judgment were unable to freely set up mediation schemes because they were worried about the consistency of judgment and mediation, so they were timid in mediation and could not make better use of mediation to solve disputes. Secondly, from the perspective of legal provisions, although the existing civil litigation laws and regulations, relevant judicial interpretations and the people's court organization law have basic provisions on the division of responsibilities of various personnel within the court organization, they lack detailed provisions, which is also the fundamental reason why although all courts try civil cases, they sometimes do different things. Some courts have implemented the examination system for the presiding judge, equipped the presiding judge with special assistant judges and clerks, and some judges also hold several positions. In my opinion, if there are clear and detailed provisions on who should do what and who should not do what in the courts, it will be conducive to the coordination and unity of the work rhythm of various courts.
Third, clear the timely judgment after the trial. At present, most courts can carry out timely and effective work from filing to hearing. Generally speaking, the time interval from filing a case to opening a court session will not exceed one and a half months, and the work arrangement is relatively compact. However, after the trial, the case is often shelved because of various problems, and the judgment can not be made until the trial time is near. The reason is firstly the judge's subjective consciousness. Some judges think that the trial period is still early and there are many other things, so they are not in a hurry to start investigation, collegiate bench and judgment. However, some judges always hope to close the case through mediation or the parties' reconciliation or withdrawal, which can save the rigorous and relatively laborious step of making a judgment. Therefore, the case is always delayed for a long time until it can no longer be delayed. In the final analysis, an important reason for this situation is that the legal provisions are not clear. Although the law stipulates the basic trial time limit and some trial steps and time limits, the time requirement for when to make a judgment after the trial is basically blank. In view of this situation, courts at all levels can try to make the following restrictive provisions in the form of post responsibility system: summary cases must be judged within half a month (or twenty days) after the court session; Ordinary cases must be decided within one month (or two months) after the court session. If it is necessary to extend the judgment time due to special circumstances, it must be approved by the president in charge. Of course, it would be better if the Supreme People's Court made corresponding supplementary provisions from top to bottom.
Four, specifically distinguish between summary procedure and ordinary procedure to hear cases, and expand the scope of summary procedure to hear cases. Nowadays, in the trial practice, a large number of cases can be handled well through summary procedures. Due to man-made or legal restrictions, it is not only time-consuming but also limited trial resources to use ordinary procedures to conduct trials. For example, in cases where the whereabouts of the parties are unknown, according to the current judicial interpretation, ordinary procedures must be adopted for trial. In most cases, this kind of case is relatively simple, and the quality of the case can also be guaranteed by using summary procedures. It is a simple or ordinary procedure to distinguish between cases by the whereabouts of the parties, which has no practical significance except to show the prudence of the court's trial attitude. Similarly, it cannot be said that the court's trial attitude is not prudent. Although the trial level of judges in China needs to be further improved, it should be noted that their level has been greatly improved through years of unremitting training and strict control of the access system. Even the judges of the grass-roots courts have basically reached the bachelor's degree or above, and have been able to adapt to the higher trial requirements. Therefore, we should re-examine the existing standards for dividing summary cases into ordinary cases and actively expand the scope of application of summary procedures in order to reduce litigation costs and improve trial efficiency.
Five, effectively increase the court hardware construction. In recent years, the hardware construction of grass-roots courts in China has made great achievements, such as going abroad for inspection, delivery and other matters can basically guarantee the use of cars, and the construction of network information has also begun. However, it should be noted that the existing hardware construction is still far from the actual requirements. In the current trial environment with many cases and heavy tasks, judges have mastered computer operation skills through training and self-study. However, after making legal documents on computers, there was too much work to rob computers, and some judges without computers often came to a standstill. Moreover, the legal tools, books and business magazines of most grass-roots courts are relative.
Insufficient feedback and insufficient training of grassroots judges. Judges always have a mental state of insufficient knowledge, not broad vision, not sophisticated enough business and not daring enough in their work. The reason is that there are not enough learning, training and hardware facilities. This situation can be completely solved by increasing training, improving working environment and equipping with necessary hardware. For example, if every grass-roots court cannot be equipped with relatively complete legal books, it can be solved by setting up a * * * regional legal library. For example, in Bengbu area, since there is no guarantee that every grass-roots court can have a library, it is still possible to establish a relatively perfect * * * law library in the whole Bengbu area.
In addition, there are some methods and practical attempts, which can effectively improve the efficiency of civil trials, such as trying the simple trial of ordinary procedures, trying the format of simple judgment documents, and setting up corresponding personal injury, labor disputes, marriage and family trial groups in civil trial courts for different types of cases, all of which are very good and beneficial attempts, and I will not repeat them here.
In short, improving the efficiency of civil trial is a systematic and comprehensive project, which requires unified leadership, multi-party cooperation, clear responsibilities and reasonable division of labor on the basis of ensuring the quality of civil trial and safeguarding judicial justice, and finally realizes institutionalization and legalization through the introduction of specific rules for handling cases, thus achieving a harmonious and orderly state.