The perfection of a society ruled by law in China needs to establish a strong judicial credibility, and judicial justice is the foundation and guarantee for the emergence of judicial credibility. Judicial justice includes procedural justice and substantive justice, both of which are indispensable components of judicial justice. It is imperative to study the value of procedural justice and improve its status in order to promote the process of rule of law in China and improve judicial credibility.

Keywords: judicial credibility, procedural justice, substantive justice

Judicial credibility is a kind of public credit established by judicial institutions in a certain society through their functions and powers. On the one hand, this public trust is reflected in the people's full trust and dependence on the judiciary and their conscious obedience to the judicial authority; on the other hand, it is reflected in the fact that the authority of the law has been established in the whole society and the public is full of confidence in the law. The perfection of China's society ruled by law must depend on the establishment of judicial credibility. Only justice can generate credibility, and judicial justice includes procedural justice and substantive justice. As Justice Jackson of the United States Supreme Court thinks, "the justice and rationality of procedure are the inherent essence of freedom. If possible, people would rather implement a violent substantive law through fair procedures than a more tolerant substantive law through unfair procedures. " Procedural injustice does no less harm to judicial credibility and judicial authority than substantive injustice.

First, the connotation and value of procedural justice

Chinese and foreign scholars have different views on the content of procedural justice, among which the most influential are the views of American scholars Bells and Golding. Bells believes that procedural justice should establish the following seven principles: (1) peace principle: procedure should be peaceful; (2) Voluntary principle: People should be able to voluntarily submit their disputes to the court for settlement; (3) Participation principle: the parties should be able to participate in the court's dispute settlement activities with influence; (4) The principle of fairness: the procedure should treat the parties fairly and equally; (5) Understandability principle: the procedure should be understood by the parties; (6) The principle of timeliness: the procedure should provide timely judgment; (7) The principle of stopping disputes: the court makes a final ruling on disputes. Golding, on the other hand, believes that the standard of procedural justice has three aspects and nine principles: first, neutrality. (1) People who are related to themselves should not be judges; (2) The result should not include the personal interests of the dispute solver; (3) Give fair support to the litigation of all parties. Second, the persuasion of conflict. (1) Pay fair attention to the litigation of all parties; (2) The dispute solver should listen to the arguments and evidence of both parties; (3) The dispute solver should only listen to the opinions of the other party in the presence of one party; (4) All parties should have a fair opportunity to respond to the arguments and evidence put forward by the other party. Third, the ruling. (1) The content to be solved should be based on rational deduction; (2) Reasoning should be aimed at the arguments and evidence put forward.

Sun Xiaoxia, a scholar in China, believes that the democracy, power control, equality, openness, science and civilization of procedure are the basic requirements for procedural justice in a modern society ruled by law. Without these six aspects, procedural justice would be incomplete. Other scholars believe that procedural justice should include neutrality, equality, democracy, openness and voluntariness.

Based on the views of experts and scholars at home and abroad, the author believes that the connotation and value of procedural justice can be considered from the following five aspects in combination with the actual situation in China:

(A) the stability of the program

The stability of procedure means that the judicial procedure must remain stable for a certain period of time, so that the executors of the procedure have a set of definite procedures to follow. Once litigation acts and litigation results occur, they must be as effective as possible. At the same time, among many dispute settlement methods, judicial decisions are final and stable. Even if the judgment produced through judicial procedure is wrong, it can only be corrected through proper judicial procedure.

Neutrality of judges

The neutrality of judges means that judges must treat all parties equally, judge in the middle and be impartial in litigation; At the same time, a judge cannot be a judge in his own case, and a judge has no legal interest in the case he hears. The psychological assumption that the parties hand over the dispute to the third person, that is, the judge, is that the judge is neutral. Neutrality is the basis for judges to gain the trust of the parties, and it is also the premise of equality of judicial procedures and fairness of adjudication.

public participation

Public participation in the procedure means that the public whose rights and interests may be affected by the procedure have the right and opportunity to participate in the formulation and implementation of the procedure and have a de facto impact on the final result. After the results are produced, the public should have enough opportunities to participate in the process of effect feedback and mechanism improvement. As the old legal proverb says, "Both sides should be heard, even if the judgment seems obvious."

(d) openness of the process

Openness is a basic principle of the modern judicial system, which requires the judicial process to be open and transparent and subject to social supervision. The openness of procedure is the inherent requirement of judicial justice. Judicial openness includes the whole judicial process of filing a case, investigation, prosecution, trial and judgment, except for cases involving state secrets, personal privacy, commercial secrets and other laws that are not open, the judicial process is open.

(5) procedural equality

Procedural equality mainly refers to the equality of litigants, which is also the concrete embodiment of equality before the law in procedural justice. To realize the equality of judicial procedure, the most important thing is to ask the judge to give equal protection and treatment to both parties. Equal protection means non-discrimination. Its basic requirement is that judges give equal opportunities, facilities and means to both parties in litigation, pay equal attention to the opinions and evidence of all parties, and fully consider the opinions of all parties when making judgments. Treating all parties equally is an inevitable requirement of judges and a prerequisite for the judiciary to win public respect.

Second, the interpretation of the problems faced by China's judicial procedural justice.

(1) Interpretation of legislation

China's legislative guiding ideology and specific norms generally emphasize the importance of substantive justice, while ignoring the important value of procedure.

Taking China's criminal procedure law as an example, from the first legislative purpose: "In order to ensure the correct implementation of the criminal law, punish crimes, protect the people, safeguard national security and social security, and safeguard the socialist social order, this law is formulated in accordance with the Constitution", without mentioning the value of realizing procedural justice. Judging from the provisions of Article 227 of the specific legal norms, "if the people's court of second instance finds that the trial of the people's court of first instance has one of the following violations of legal procedures, it shall make a ruling to revoke the original judgment and send it back to the people's court that originally tried it for a new trial: …… (3) depriving or restricting the legal litigation rights of the parties, which may affect the fair trial; (5) Other' legal proceedings may affect the fair trial'. When there are proceedings that deprive or restrict the legal litigation rights of the parties or other legal proceedings that violate the law, the original judgment should be revoked and sent back for retrial only if it may affect the fair trial. The law pays more attention to the correctness of substantive judgment and less attention to the importance of procedural issues. Although Article 50 of the Criminal Procedure Law stipulates that "judges, prosecutors and investigators must collect all kinds of evidence that can prove the guilt or innocence of criminal suspects and defendants and the seriousness of the crime according to legal procedures. It is strictly forbidden to extort confessions by torture and to collect evidence by threats, seduction, deception or other illegal methods, and no one may be forced to prove his guilt. However, there is no provision in the procedure to give criminal suspects and defendants the right to silence, which makes it difficult for this provision to achieve its legislative purpose, so that the problem of extorting confessions by torture still occurs from time to time in reality.