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Feng Yuqing, Zeng Yu | Changing Trends of Perceived Justice in the Construction of the Rule of Law in China——A Tracking Study Based on CSS Data
2023-10-26 [author] Feng Yuqing, Ze preview:

[author]Feng Yuqing, Ze

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Changing Trends of Perceived Justice in the Construction of the Rule of Law in China——A Tracking Study Based on CSS Data


Author Feng Yuqing

Associate Professor, School of Law, Southeast University
Author Zeng Yu
Associate Professor, School of International and Public Affairs, Shanghai Jiao Tong University


Abstract: Perceived justice is a manifestation of the public's legal consciousness, a subjective reflection of "distributive justice" and "procedural justice", and is influenced by both the "national view of law" and the "scene view of law". It is influenced by both the "national view of law" and the "scenario view of law". Analyses based on data from the China Social Survey (CSS) show that during the 14-year period from 2006 to 2019, the Chinese public generally held a positive evaluation of judicial and law enforcement fairness, showing a U-shaped trend of first decreasing and then increasing with 2013 as the turning point. There are differences in perceived justice among different social groups, but the differences show a narrowing trend after 2013; litigation experience has a negative effect on the parties' perception of justice, but this negative effect diminishes after 2013. Regression analyses show that factors such as gender, age, education, social class, family, Internet use, and the level of local rule of law have different degrees and directions of significant influence on perceived justice. Changes in perceived justice are mainly influenced by the dominance of the state's view of the law, the dilution of the scene's view of the law, and individual litigation experience. More detailed research on perceived justice is needed to steadily improve people's perception of judicial fairness and justice.


Keywords: perceived justice; litigation experience; law-based governance in all respects; judicial reforms


Introduction

In his instructions on political and legal work, General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized that "We must improve the system for ensuring social justice under the rule of law, and we will see that the people feel justice has been served in each and every judicial case." Fairness and justice should not only be realized, but should be realized in a way that is "felt" by the people. The fairness and justice felt by the people in judicial cases, or "perceived justice", can be understood as an individual's cognition, feelings and feedback on judicial justice, which is manifested as an individual's subjective evaluation, degree of conviction and enforcement of the legal system, judicial judgment and law enforcement decisions.

Enhancing the people's perception of justice is a long-term goal of China's rule of law reform and a yardstick for testing the effectiveness of "law-based governance in all respects". In October 2014, the 18th CPC Central Committee adopted at its Fourth Plenary Session the CPC Central Committee's Resolution on Certain Major Issues Concerning Comprehensively Advancing the Law-Based Governance of China, (hereinafter referred to as the "Resolution"). The Resolution for the first time identified perceived justice as the goal of rule of law reform, stating that "It is necessary to improve the judicial management system and the mechanism for the operation of judicial power, to regulate judicial behaviour, to strengthen the supervision of judicial activities,  and we will see that the people feel justice has been served in each and every judicial case."

Since the release of the Resolution, the concept of "the people feel judicial fairness and justice" has been repeatedly emphasized in policy documents, reports and speeches related to the State's work in the political and legal fields, and has been further expanded to include the idea of "We must ensure that the people feel fairness and justice prevails in every law, every law enforcement decision, and every judicial case."

Currently, the relevant research on perceived justice mainly focuses on the analysis of small samples in specific regions, specific groups, and specific judicial organs, while there is a lack of large-sample and cross-period empirical tests of the public's true feelings about judicial fairness and justice and its formation mechanism. Specifically, what is the general attitude of the public towards judicial fairness and justice in China? Are there any differences in the feelings of different social groups? How do public attitudes and feelings change over time? What factors may affect such changes? These questions require further research.

To address the issues above, this study takes the public's "perceived justice" as the research object, and empirically analyses the trend of changes in the Chinese people's perception of justice and its influencing factors during the 14 years before and after the "law-based governance in all respects" based on the data from the Chinese Social Survey (CSS). Relevant research will help to understand the effectiveness of the reform of the rule of law at the subjective level of the public, and further explore the key areas of improving perceived justice.


1.The Internal Construction of Perceived Justice

In contemporary China, perceived justice has a bearing on social harmony and stability, sustained economic development and the well-being of the people, and is the yardstick for testing whether the achievements of the rule of law are effectively serving the people. Perceived justice is not only a political discourse closely related to the law-based governance in all respects, but also a well-grounded academic concept. Its academic origins are closely linked to the following two lines of research.

Firstly, the study of perceived justice goes hand in hand with the study of popular legal consciousness in the sociology of law. Attention to the legal consciousness of the general public began in the 1980s. Inspired by the concept of "legal pluralism", researchers believe that law does not only exist in texts and precedents, but also exists in all aspects of social life through the radiation of the legal system and judicial decisions, which is manifested in the thoughts and behaviors in relation to "law" of every ordinary citizen. Therefore, the researcher attempts to explore the "law in daily life" by examining the public's understanding of the law and their awareness of disputes, breaking through the limited scope of traditional legal studies on judicial justice at the case level.

Correspondingly, perceived justice is the people's sense of judicial fairness and justice, and also falls within the broad category of popular legal awareness. Perceived justice can also be viewed as a kind of "law in daily life", a legal awareness formed by the radiation of the legal system, judicial cases and law enforcement decisions, a secondary construction of the people's written law of the State, and a manifestation of the development of the rule of law in its subjective dimension.

Secondly, the study of perceived justice and the subjective procedural justice in social psychology research have a high degree of overlap in terms of the study object, and the methodology can also be used for reference. This research tradition attempts to use the observation and quantification methods of psychology to analyse and explain the subjective feelings and perceptions of actors towards procedural justice, so as to deconstruct the connotation of procedural justice as a core variable of the rule of law at the ontological level, and to explore feasible paths to achieve the goal of the rule of law. Conceptually, perceived justice encompasses both distributive justice at the substantive level and procedural justice at the procedural level.

In terms of connotations, however, it is generally accepted that the sense of fairness and justice, whether in legal systems, judicial cases, or law enforcement decisions, points more to procedural justice. For example, empirical studies by Allan E. Lind and Tom Tyler have shown that in judicial cases, the subjective feeling of procedural justice is more important than the particular outcome.

If the process or procedure of forming this outcome gives rise to a feeling of unfairness and injustice, both parties will find it difficult to feel fairness and justice from the case, even if the outcome is favourable to one party. A study by Zhang Guang, Jennifer R. Wilking, and Yu Miao on the election process of farmers in China found that procedural features had a much greater impact on the participants' (farmers') perception of fairness than the results that were favourable to the participants (farmers), which further verified the importance of procedural justice in Chinese people's perceptions. Guo Chunzhen's attempt to construct the concept of "subjective procedural justice" to explain perceived procedural justice is a social psychological interpretation of perceived justice.

At the same time, from a methodological point of view, the social psychological study of procedural justice starts from the subjective perspective of human beings, and explores the mapping of the institutional value of justice at the subjective level, which shifts from the supply-side perspective centred on the legal system to the demand-side perspective centred on the people, and provides an effective tool for the further observation and deconstruction of perceived justice. The change of perspective also makes the "perceived justice" in this paper different from the concepts of "judicial credibility" and "judicial justice", because the latter two are mainly based on the institutional reform as the starting point and goal; while the former is mainly based on the perspective of people, and measures and evaluates the effectiveness of the development of the rule of law based on people's subjective feelings rather than on institutional reform measures.

The theoretical analyses above show that perceived justice is the embodiment of popular legal consciousness, which is the subjective mapping of "distributive justice" and "procedural justice". Next, the formation mechanism of perceived justice needs to be further analyzed. According to the theory of legal sociology, the formation and development of legal consciousness is influenced by both the "national legal view" and the "scene legal view".

The former refers to the knowledge and understanding of the law by public authorities such as  Public Security Bureau, People’s Procuratorate, People’s Court, Bureau of Justice and local governments, reflecting the will of the legislator, while the latter is the view of the law spontaneously formed by the grass-roots people in real life, which is a secondary construction of the law of the State. The latter's understanding of the law tends to be more flexible, and instead of implementing the law strictly according to the rules, as expected by the legislator, the latter corresponds the law to real-life situations and forms a new set of legal understanding and legitimacy norms. The formation of perceived justice is influenced by both the top-down influence of the "national view of law" and the bottom-up influence of the "scenario view of law", and these two influences work together and permeate each other, resulting in a combination of overall consistency and inherent differences in perceived justice.

On the one hand, the "national view of law" has shaped the basic consensus of the public on judicial fairness and justice from top to bottom. There are two main mechanisms by which the "view of national law" affects the perception of justice. The first is the impact of judicial system reform on the perception of justice, or "institutional theory". Comparative political science research shows that judicial system reform can help alleviate social conflicts and pressures, promote public recognition of social fairness and justice, and thus enhance the legitimacy of governance. Since 2014, China's courts have promoted the implementation of a series of judicial system and mechanism reforms, such as the people-centered litigation service system, the judicial responsibility system as the core of the judicial power operation system, the people's court personnel categorical management and professional security system, and its common goal is to "let the people feel fairness and justice in every judicial case". Although in judicial practice, the reform implementation plans and implementation intensity of the judicial system in different regions and levels are different, the overall direction is the same, which fundamentally changes the people's perception of the judicial system and builds a consensus on the public's perception of justice. The second is the impact of law-related public opinion propaganda on the perception of justice, or "propaganda theory". In the modern judicial system, case-by-case adjudication and punishment are "a kind of 'cultural performance' that communicates with various social audiences and conveys a broad meaning" in order to convey a message of justice and authority to the public. For example, in social hot cases such as the "Xu Ting case" and the "Peng Yu case", the interaction between media reports, public opinion and public opinion affected the adjudication process and outcome of the case to a certain extent, and also shaped the public's understanding of judicial fairness and justice for the second time. It is worth noting that the emergence of social hot cases is accidental, but the macro impact of various judicial case information on the public is not scattered, but the result of national policy guidance. China's judicial policy takes maintaining social harmony and stability as the long-term goal, and the demonstration effect of individual cases adjudication presents a generally consistent value orientation. Therefore, although the impact of judicial judgments on the public's perception of justice varies from case to case, it generally shows a high degree of consistency, which to a certain extent shapes the basic consensus of the public on judicial fairness and justice. In summary, the "National View of Law" has formed top-down radiation through institutional reform and case publicity, shaping the basic consensus in the public's perception of justice, and making the public's perception of justice present a common trend at the macro level. Therefore, it is feasible and necessary to conduct large-sample, cross-time quantitative observation of the overall picture and trend of perceived justice.

On the other hand, the bottom-up influence of the "scene legal view" exacerbates the inherent differences in perceived justice under different social structures. Compared with the objective and rational legal system, perceived justice is more subjective and emotional, naturally affected by the pluralistic value orientation of society, and inevitably there are differences between different subjects. The influence of the "scene legal view" makes the differences between individuals show structural characteristics, that is, the perceived justice of subjects in specific scenes tends to be consistent, while the differences between different scenes become more prominent. When we discuss public perception of justice, the "scene" here needs to be understood in a broad sense—no longer limited to the facts, reasons, or external circumstances of a particular dispute in the sense of individual cases, but more to the "social structural features" discussed in the sociology of cases. Specifically, social structural factors such as gender, age, household registration, education level, political identity, and socioeconomic status together constitute the scenes embedded in the public's legal awareness, and the formation and development of perceived justice are different in different scenarios. Hu Ming's questionnaire survey of the public in Hangzhou, Zhengzhou and Kunming found that the public's trust in the public security and judicial organs was strongly correlated with the age and occupation of the respondents, and there were obvious differences between those under 20 and over 40, financial units and migrant workers. He Xin, Wang Lungang and Su Yang's fieldwork on migrant workers' wages found that migrant workers, based on their occupation, knowledge background, economic ability and other reasons, tend to think that they are in a weak position in the law, and voluntarily give up judicial remedies and choose extrajudicial rights protection because they "cannot reach the law". There is no doubt that the large-sample empirical test of Chinese people's perception of justice cannot ignore the differences and influencing factors of perceived justice under different social structures.

Furthermore, the development and change of perceived justice is also closely related to the subject's experience of participating in justice. Most of the public have no litigation experience, and their understanding of justice mainly comes from external perception, and only a few people have the opportunity to form an empirical understanding of judicial fairness and justice through personal participation. Although there are only a very small number of people with litigation experience and limited influence on the overall trend of perceived justice, their feelings are more reflective of the true level of the development of the rule of law, so it is worth in-depth examination. Existing research is divided on how litigation experience affects a party's perception of justice. For example, a survey of 959 litigants in Jiangxi Province by the Jiangxi Provincial Higher People's Court Research Group showed that although obedience to judgments was not ideal, more than 60% of the parties were satisfied or somewhat satisfied with the fairness of the court and the judiciary. In stark contrast, Mary E. Gallagher's study of clients at the Shanghai University Legal Aid Center shows that after litigation, the parties' excessive expectations of the judiciary change, and then develop a new understanding of the judiciary and the courts, a process described as "informed de-enchantment".

In response to the above differences, Feng Jing divided the legal awareness of civil litigants into two levels: one is "specific support" for the court of litigation that made the judgment, the presiding judge or the specific judgment result, and the other is "general support" for the court system and the judicial system. Based on in-depth interviews with 105 parties in grassroots courts, she found that litigation experience weakened "specific support" but did not affect "general support." These two types of support echo the external perceptual perspective and the experiential epistemic perspective of perceived justice.

However, the above conclusions mainly come from a limited range of small empirical data, which is easy to fall into the trap of selectivity bias. Therefore, a broader level of empirical testing is needed to clarify the relationship between people's perception of justice and real judicial experience.


2. Data and variables


The data based on this study comes from the Chinese Social Survey (CSS), a continuous national sample survey initiated by the Institute of Sociology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. We selected six surveys from 2006 to 2019 as analysis data, and obtained a total of 55,075 samples. CSS questionnaire data is selected for two main reasons: first, CSS survey is a rare questionnaire data in China that continuously focuses on judicial and law enforcement fairness for a long time; Second, the CSS survey is more detailed, providing a large number of variable data on demographic characteristics, family and social life, social attitudes, etc., which is convenient for us to explore and analyze the subjective and objective factors affecting the perceived justice of the respondents.

Regarding the measurement of perceived justice, we use the question: "How fair do you think justice and law enforcement are in current social life?" ”

The options available to respondents were "very unfair", "not very fair", "fair", "very fair", and "difficult to say". Based on the respondents' responses, we constructed perceptual justice as an ordered variable at four levels (1 is "very unfair", 2 is "not very fair", 3 is "somewhat fair", and 4 is "very fair").

In order to grasp the changing trend of perceived justice and its influencing factors, we selected relevant variables for analysis.

First, there is the impact of litigation experience. Existing research has shown that litigation experience has an important impact on the perception of justice. We responded based on our respondents' questions about "Which of the following have happened to you or your family in the past year?" (litigating)", which is divided into two categories, with and without litigation experience, assigned a value of 1 and 0, respectively.

Second, it is the influence of a series of social structural variables such as gender, age, household registration, education level, and social class. The gender variable is dichotomous and assigned the values 1 for males and 0 for females. In terms of age, respondents were divided into three age groups: the youth group under 35 years old, the middle-aged group aged 36 to 59, and the elderly group over 60 years old. In terms of household registration, including the two main elements of household registration category (agricultural and non-agricultural) and household registration place (local and foreign), taking into account the difference between urban and rural resource allocation and benefit distribution, the respondent's household registration category was divided into two categories, and the value was assigned as 1 for rural areas and 0 for urban areas; At the same time, local residents and non-local residents have different attachments to public power and different legal awareness, so the respondents are divided into local residents and non-local residents. In terms of educational level, respondents were divided into four groups according to their educational background: "elementary school or below", "junior high school", "high school", and "university or above". In terms of political identity, respondents were divided into two categories: Communist Party members and non-Communist Party members. In terms of social class, the subjective and objective dichotomy is adopted: first, it is grouped according to the respondent's family income, which is divided into low-income, middle-income, middle-income, middle-high-income and high-income groups; Second, according to the socio-economic status of the respondents' self-evaluation, the respondents were divided into five classes: lower, middle, middle, upper middle and upper.
Third, it is the potential impact of other external factors such as family, work unit, media use, social security, local governance, etc. on perceived justice. A dichotomous variable was used to determine the respondent's marital status (1 = married, 0 = unmarried) and employment status (1 = employed, 0 = unemployed). In terms of social security benefits, three dichotomous variables were used to measure whether respondents had pension insurance (1=yes, 0=no), health insurance (1=yes, 0=no), and unemployment insurance (1=yes, 0=no). Compared with traditional media such as television and newspapers, Internet media are subject to a lower degree of control, so users can obtain richer and more diversified information on the rule of law, thereby affecting their perception of justice. We also included Internet usage in the control variables (1=yes, 0=no). There is a potential correlation between local governments' rule of law performance, regional governance capacity and perceived justice, which can be measured by the relevant evaluations of respondents. The question involved in the questionnaire was whether the respondents were satisfied with the local government's three tasks: "acting in accordance with the law and enforcing the law fairly", "cracking down on crime and maintaining public order", and "performing official duties honestly and punishing corruption". The three jobs were rated "very bad", "not very good", "relatively good" and "very good", and were assigned a scale of 1 to 4.

Finally, to control for the possible impact of regional differences, a series of provincial-level variables are included, including total GDP, GDP growth rate, total population, and urbanization level.


3.the overall picture and trend of the Chinese people's perception of justice


3.1The overall situation of the Chinese people's perception of justice

From 2006 to 2019, the vast majority of the Chinese people identified with justice and law enforcement, and could perceive justice and fairness. In the total sample, 67.6% of respondents believed that China's judiciary and law enforcement were very fair or fair, 26% of respondents believed that justice and law enforcement were not very fair, and only 6.4% of respondents believed that justice and law enforcement were very unfair. This is inconsistent with the conclusion of some small studies, that is, "the public's satisfaction with the judiciary is not high".

In order to capture the changing trend of Chinese people's perception of justice, we divide the whole sample by year and count it again. At the same time, in order to verify the independence of the changing trend of perceived justice, and to exclude the overall change trend of social fairness as much as possible from the entrapment of perceived justice, the overall sense of social fairness, the sense of fairness of the college entrance examination system and the sense of public medical fairness of residents over the years were also counted as a reference system to better compare and present the change trend of perceived justice. Figure 1 shows the average change trend of respondents' perception of judicial and law enforcement fairness, overall social fairness, college entrance examination system fairness and public medical fairness in the six surveys.


Note: The 2019 CSS questionnaire was not designed to ask questions about the overall sense of social equity, so there was no average overall sense of social fairness in that year.

As shown in the figure, from 2006 to 2019, the average sense of fairness of judicial and law enforcement in China showed a U-shaped trend of first falling and then rising. In 2006, 64.9 per cent of respondents considered justice and law enforcement to be fair (both fair and very fair). This dropped to 61.2% and 58.5% in 2008 and 2013. Since 2013, this proportion has rebounded and continued to rise. In 2015, 66.8% of Chinese residents felt fairness in judicial and law enforcement. This rose to 70.6% in 2017 and peaked at 79.4% in 2019.

The data shows that despite a trend of decreasing first and then increasing in the mean, the Chinese public's sense of fairness in the judiciary and law enforcement has improved significantly over the past 15 years, especially since 2013. Echoing this trend, after the Fourth Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China put forward the basic strategy of comprehensively governing the country according to law, China carried out comprehensive deepening reform of the judicial system and mechanism, aiming to ensure that "efforts are made to let the people feel fairness and justice in every judicial case". Judging from the time nodes and trends of the data results, the transformation and substantial improvement of the people's perception of justice tend to be consistent with the process of fully implementing and deepening the reform of the judicial system and mechanism.

Given the complexity of perceptual justice changes, the above views are not absolute, and more analysis and argument are needed. In the past decade or so, China has undergone tremendous changes in terms of system, economy and culture, which may affect the public's perception of judicial fairness and justice. Therefore, in order to further examine the impact of judicial system reform on the perception of justice among the population, other disturbing factors need to be eliminated as much as possible. A potential question is that changes in perceived justice may not be due to the achievements of rule of law construction such as the reform of the judicial system and mechanism, but from the radiation effect of reform and development in other fields such as economy and culture.

Figure 1 results show that this probability is relatively low. It can be seen from the figure that whether it is the overall sense of social fairness, the sense of fairness of the college entrance examination system, or the sense of fairness of public medical care, there is no U-shaped change trend similar to perceived justice. This suggests that changes in perceived justice can hardly be attributed entirely to the radiation effects of changes in people's overall sense of fairness or changes in fairness in other areas.


3.2 Perceptual justice of various social groups

In order to explore the differences in public perception of justice under different social structures, we further analyze the current situation and trend of perceived justice of various social groups. Figure 2 shows the perception of justice and law enforcement fairness by social group and its changes over the years. In general, the change trend of perceived justice of various social groups is basically consistent with the whole, and roughly maintains the U-shaped trend of first falling and then rising. There are large differences between some social groups, but these differences have generally narrowed since 2013, as follows.


Fig. 2 Changes in the perception of justice by group (2006-2019)


In terms of gender, men and women had little difference in perceived justice, and both showed a U-shaped change trend. In Figure 2(a), the two lines representing men's perception of justice crossed around 2011, after which women have been higher than men. This means that women have slightly higher perception of justice than men in the past decade, but the gap is limited.

In terms of age, there are certain differences between the young, middle-aged and elderly groups. Of the three groups, the perceived justice of youth has changed the most over the past 14 years. In 2006, 62.8 per cent of young people believed that justice and law enforcement were fair, but by 2013 that proportion had dropped to 52 per cent. Not only that, in the past seven years, the gap between the three groups in terms of judicial and law enforcement fairness has also widened.

In 2006, 66.4 per cent of the elderly group believed that justice and law enforcement were fair, and the proportion of the middle-aged group was 65.5 per cent, and the elderly group was only 3.6 per cent higher than that of the younger group. But by 2013, the proportion reached 67.1% among the elderly, 8.3% and 15.1% higher than the middle-aged and young people, respectively. Since 2013, the sense of justice and justice fairness among young people has been rising, and the gap between them and the other two groups has been narrowing. By 2019, 82.5% of young people believed that justice and law enforcement were fair, the highest proportion of all age groups.

In terms of urban-rural differences, respondents from rural areas have a higher sense of fairness in the judiciary and law enforcement than urban counterparts, but the gap between the two has been narrowing in recent years. From 2006 to 2013, the difference between rural residents and urban residents in terms of judicial and law enforcement fairness gradually widened. In 2013, 67.1 percent of rural residents believed that justice and law enforcement were fair, while only 52 percent of urban residents believed that justice and law enforcement were fair, a difference of 15.1 percent. This trend reversed after 2013, when the gap between the two groups narrowed. In 2019, 80.4% of rural residents believed that justice and law enforcement were fair, and 78.7% of urban residents also participated, with a difference of only 1.7%.

In terms of floating population, local residents and immigrants have also shown great changes in their perception of justice. Local respondents have a higher sense of judicial and law enforcement fairness than non-local respondents. Although the gap was only 1.2 per cent in 2006, it has widened rapidly since then and has only narrowed in recent years.

In terms of educational attainment, perceptual justice differs among groups with different levels of education, and differences between groups vary over time. In 2006, the differences between the four groups were not significant. From 2008 to 2015, the perception of judicial fairness and justice among the four groups showed great differences, which was reflected in the higher the education level, the more likely the group to believe that justice and law enforcement were unfair. After 2015, the differences between groups gradually narrowed. In recent years, perceived justice has risen fastest among highly educated groups. In 2019, 84.3% of tertiary education groups believed that justice and law enforcement were fair, the highest proportion among the four groups.

In terms of political identity, the Communist Party members and non-Communist Party members showed a similar U-shaped trend in judicial and law enforcement fairness. In contrast, Communist Party members believe that the proportion of judicial and law enforcement is fair than that of non-Communist Party members. In 2006, 68.9 percent of Communist Party members believed that justice and law enforcement were fair, compared with 64.5 percent of non-Party members. In 2019, the proportion rose to 82.4% among Communist Party members and 79.1% among non-Communist Party members.

In terms of social classes, whether divided by objective income or subjective self-evaluation of respondents, there are obvious differences in perceived justice between social classes, but in different forms. Among the various strata divided by income difference, the proportion of low-income groups that believe that justice and law enforcement fairness is higher than that of other strata groups. Before 2017, the sense of fairness and real income level seemed to show a negative correlation, that is, the higher the income level, the less fair the judiciary and law enforcement were felt, but this negative correlation gradually disappeared in recent years. Another picture is presented among the various strata divided by subjective evaluation.

Unlike objectively, low-income groups are more likely to feel judicial fairness and justice, subjectively, groups that think that their economic status is below the middle level have a significantly lower perception of judicial and law enforcement fairness than those who think they are higher. In six surveys conducted between 2006 and 2019, the lowest percentage of those who identified themselves as economically lower and lower in terms of fairness in the administration of justice and law enforcement was almost always the lowest. Interestingly, those who consider themselves to be in the middle and upper middle economic status, rather than the upper class, are the groups that believe that justice and law enforcement are fair. The possible reason for the aforementioned difference in perceived justice is the difference in the subjective and objective standards identified by social classes.


3.3Perceived justice for those who have experienced litigation and those who have not experienced it

From the previous theoretical analysis, it can be seen that the existence of litigation experience will lead to differences in the perspective of understanding the judicial system, and then form a completely different perception of judicial fairness and justice. Figure 3 shows the difference in perception between the experienced and non-experienced groups from 2006 to 2017.