[author]Feng Yuqing, Ze
[content]
Author Feng Yuqing
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.
As shown in the figure, the sense of fairness of the group with litigation experience is much lower than that of the group without litigation experience, but the gap between the two has also changed significantly in the past ten years. In 2006, 48.7 per cent of respondents with litigation experience considered justice and law enforcement to be fair. But by 2013, that share had fallen to 23.1 percent, half as much as in 2006. After 2013, the sense of fairness among those with litigation experience began to rise significantly. In 2017, 49.2% of respondents with litigation experience believed that justice and law enforcement were fair, the highest proportion in years.
This provides further evidence to support the assertion above that the reform of the judicial system since the full rule of law has improved the experience of those involved in the judiciary and may have a contributing effect to the perception of justice.
4.the regression analysis of the influencing factors of perceived justice
4.1 Regression analysis models and results
The above briefly describes the overall picture and trends of perceived justice. To further explore the change mechanism of perceived justice and its influencing factors, it is necessary to control many variables affecting perceived justice and conduct more in-depth regression analysis.
Depending on the nature of the ordering of the explanatory variables, we use an ordered logistic regression model. The ordered Logit regression analysis model used in this paper is proportional odds models. The model settings are:
thereinto
x is represented as a series of vectors of explanatory and control variables.
Table 1 reports the regression results. Model 1 includes only litigation experience as an explanatory variable. In order to control for the influence of social structural factors such as gender, age, household registration, and education level on perceived justice, we included them in Model 2. Considering the potential impact of households, social security, and local governance capacity, we included variables such as Internet usage, marital status, employment status, pension insurance, medical insurance, unemployment insurance, and evaluation of local governments' performance in acting in accordance with the law, fighting crime, and punishing corruption in Model 3. At the same time, in order to reduce the potential impact of regional differences and local development levels, model 4 adds provincial variables such as total GDP, GDP growth rate, total population, and urbanization level. All four models controlled for the year fixed effect and the province fixed effect.
4.2The impact of litigation experience on the perception of justice
The statistical results in Table 1 show that litigation experience has a negative effect on the public's perception of justice. In all four model settings, the coefficients of litigation experience are negative and all are significant at the 0.1% significance level. At the same time, the impact of this negative effect is large. For example, in Model 3, the coefficient value for litigation experience is -0.792. This means that, given all other things being equal, respondents with litigation experience were 54.7% less likely to raise their sense of fairness than respondents with no litigation experience [1-exp(-0.792)].
At the same time, after controlling for a series of variables such as demographic characteristics and government performance evaluation, there was no significant difference in the size of the coefficient values of this variable, which indicated that there was a robust relationship between litigation experience and perceived justice. The above data preliminarily show that the actual experience of litigation has not fully met the expectations of the majority of the people for judicial and law enforcement fairness and justice in the same period, and this inference is supported by some small empirical studies.
In order to further explore the influence of litigation experience on perceived justice, we split the sample set and then regression analysis. As mentioned earlier, during the data survey period, China's rule of law has undergone tremendous reforms. In particular, since 2013, China has introduced a series of important reforms in the area of rule of law, which may change the feelings and experiences of litigants. In this regard, we split the total sample and performed ordered logit regression analysis on each survey data separately. Using the setting of model 4 in Table 1, we present the estimated litigation experience coefficient in Figure 4.
The X axis represents the survey year and the Y axis represents the coefficient values. As shown in the figure, from 2006 to 2017, the litigation experience coefficient showed a U-shaped change trend. In 2006, given all other things being equal, respondents with litigation experience were 40.4% less likely to be more likely to have judicial and law enforcement fairness than respondents with no litigation experience. From 2006 to 2013, the negative effect of litigation experience expanded. In 2013, it was 65.2% lower than among respondents with litigation experience than among respondents with no litigation experience. Since 2013, this expansion trend has been reversed, and the negative effect of litigation experience has been shrinking. By 2017, the difference between those with and without litigation experience had narrowed by 22.0%.
The turning point and narrowing of the negative effect of litigation experience coincides with the timing of China's rule of law reform. Since comprehensively deepening judicial reform, there has been significant improvement in the fairness of case filing and adjudication, as well as judicial standardization and transparency. The reform and effective implementation of these measures are likely to reduce the negative impact of litigation experience on the parties' sense of fairness in judicial and law enforcement. In other words, the above findings show to a certain extent that the judicial experience is improving and more and more in line with the expectations of the people.
4.3 Other factors affecting perceived justice
The statistical results show that in addition to litigation experience, changes in perceived justice are also affected by a series of social structural factors such as gender, age, education level, income, and subjective perception of one's economic status, as described above.
It should be noted in particular that among the external factors that may affect the perception of justice, Internet use has a strong impact on citizens' perception of justice. As shown in the results of Model 4 in Table 1, respondents who use the Internet believe that justice and law enforcement are fair compared to those who do not have access to the Internet by 22.2%. To a certain extent, this shows that in the past ten years, online public opinion has had a significant negative impact on the perceived justice of netizens.
Family has a stronger influence on respondents' perceived justice, and unmarried people are more likely than married people to believe justice and law enforcement fairness, given other things being equal. One possible explanation is that married people have a more stressful life than unmarried people, and directly face potential legal risks such as divorce, property division, child support, etc., and may have higher expectations for judicial or law enforcement fairness, so the level of satisfaction is reduced. In terms of social welfare, respondents with health insurance felt a higher sense of fairness in the judiciary and law enforcement than those without insurance. Employers (with or without work), endowment insurance, unemployment insurance, and social security did not find a significant impact on the perception of justice.
It is worth noting that the respondents' evaluation of local government governance ability and rule of law level is highly correlated with its perception of justice and has a strong impact. As shown in Table 1, the respondents' evaluations of local governments acting in accordance with the law, fighting crime and punishing corruption all have significant positive effects on the perception of justice. Among them, the effect of the evaluation of the performance of doing things according to law is significantly higher than the effect of the other two aspects of performance. The effectiveness of the Government in fighting crime and punishing corruption is very similar.
In model 4, for every level increase in the respondents' evaluation of local governments in accordance with the law, the incidence rate of judicial and law enforcement fairness belonging to the high group increased by 165.4%. For every level of performance evaluation in fighting crime and punishing corruption, the incidence rates of judicial and law enforcement fairness belonging to the high group increased by 33.9% and 33.8% respectively.
This result shows that the performance of local governments is not separated from the judicial organs: on the one hand, the performance of local governments in regional governance and diligence and integrity has a radiating effect, which can enhance the residents' perception of fairness and justice in judicial and law enforcement; On the other hand, in the thoughts and feelings of ordinary people, there may be conceptual overlap and cognitive confusion between fairness and justice in justice and local governance.
4.4 Robustness test
To improve the robustness of the findings, adjustments were made in conceptual measurements, estimation models, and missing values. Measuring perceived justice with binary variables loses some information compared to the measurement of quaternary ordinal variables, but considering the fact that the proportion of respondents with litigation experience in the sample is low, we use a dichotomy to measure perceived justice. Respondents who believe that justice and enforcement are fair or very fair are considered to agree with justice and law enforcement fairness and are assigned a value of 1. If the respondent's answer is "not very fair" or "very unfair", the value is 0.
Considering the change in the nature of the dependent variable and the multi-level nature of the data, we used a mixed-effects logit regression model. Since many respondents in the previous questionnaire chose "difficult to say" when answering questions about government performance, many observations were excluded due to missing values. To improve the utilization of questionnaire observations, we used the mean filling method to address the absence of variables related to government performance. Then, again, we use the four model settings in Table 1 to estimate the filled dataset. Table 2 presents the corresponding estimates.
As with the results in Table 1, the coefficients for litigation experience in all four models are negative and all are significant at the 0.1% significance level. This shows that the relationship between litigation experience and perceived justice is not affected by conceptual measurement, model change, and missing value problems, which once again proves that litigation experience reduces respondents' perception of judicial justice. From the results of Model 4, the coefficient of litigation experience is -0.15. This means that respondents with litigation experience are 14.0% less likely to agree with judicial fairness and justice than respondents with no litigation experience [1-exp(-0.150)]. The above results show that the negative effect of litigation experience on perception is robust.
Similarly, we replaced the model with a mixed-effects logit regression model and fitted the single-year data using the filled dataset. Table 3 reports the results of five annual litigation experiences on perceived justice. As can be seen from the table, all litigation experience coefficients are negative and all pass the significance test of the 5% level. In terms of coefficient value, from 2006 to 2017, the coefficient value of litigation experience still showed a U-shaped trend of first decreasing and then increasing. From 2006 to 2013, the negative effect of litigation experience on perceived justice expanded. Since 2013, although the effect of litigation experience has not changed from negative to positive, the negative effect has been shrinking, consistent with the previous findings in Figure 3. This suggests that the previous conclusion that the negative effect of litigation experience has narrowed is also robust.
5. Analysis of the mechanism of perceptual justice change
The statistical analysis results show that in the 14 years from 2006 to 2019, the development of Chinese people's perception of justice showed three main characteristics: first, the macroscopic trend showed a U-shaped change trend, that is, it declined slowly from 2006 to 2013 and rose rapidly after 2013; Second, although there are differences between different social groups, the range of group differences has shrunk significantly after 2013; Third, litigation experience has a negative effect on the perception of justice, but the negative effect continued to weaken after 2013. This section attempts to explore the mechanisms behind these three areas of change. It should be pointed out that this part mainly expands the analysis of statistical results from the theoretical level, and the relevant conclusions need to be verified by further empirical research.
5.1 Analysis of the mechanism of perceptual justice macro change trends
In the process of forming the concept of rule of law among the people in China, the national legal concept undoubtedly occupies a dominant position and is the main driving force for shaping the perception of justice. As mentioned above, the national legal concept mainly affects people's legal awareness through two ways: system reform and public opinion propaganda. Correspondingly, the influence mechanism of perceiving the macro change trend of justice can also be explained from the two theoretical approaches of "system theory" and "propaganda theory".
A basic understanding is that the changing trend of perceived justice is driven by the dual drive of institutional reform and public opinion propaganda, and the two theories complement each other. Institutional reform needs to rely on public opinion propaganda to enter the public eye and change public perception; The publicity of public opinion related to the law is a description and extension of the current situation of the rule of law and institutional reform, and cannot be separated from the reality of the system. What needs further discussion is the primary and secondary relationship and force of institutional reform and public opinion propaganda in driving the development and change of perceived justice.
The traditional theory holds that people's legal awareness is mainly shaped by public opinion propaganda, and the public's cognition of justice and law enforcement comes from directional and purposeful media guidance. It is undeniable that compared with institutional change, the impact of public opinion propaganda on the public's perception of justice is more intuitive. Over the past decade or so, and even for a longer period of time, most people in society have not had direct access to the judicial system, and public opinion propaganda has always been the main way for the public to understand the judiciary.
It can be seen from the analysis results of Table 1 above that the Internet, as the main position of public opinion propaganda, has a significant and relatively large negative impact on the perceived justice of high-frequency users, which confirms the powerful impact of public opinion propaganda on the perception of judicial justice from the empirical level. Contrary to the "enchantment effect" advocated by some scholars, the influence of online public opinion is a kind of "reverse enchantment", that is, to a large extent, the public's evaluation and expectation of judicial and law enforcement fairness and justice have been reduced.
The reasons for this phenomenon are diverse, including but not limited to: negative news is more likely to attract public attention under the effect of "negative bias"; Some self-media and online trolls guide public opinion; Survivorship bias in online voice groups, and so on. At the same time, although the pace of online speech governance has never stopped, starting from the objective law of online media dissemination, it is difficult to completely block misinformation and false information about justice and law enforcement, which will inevitably affect network users.
While affirming the influence of public opinion propaganda, our statistical analysis results also show that traditional theories may overestimate the impact of public opinion propaganda on the perception of justice in contemporary China to a certain extent, and ignore the role of institutional reform. We are more inclined to believe that institutional reform is the cornerstone force driving change in perceived justice. The U-shaped change trend of perceived justice with 2013 as the inflection point highly coincides with the process of rule of law reform in China.
Since the establishment of "comprehensive rule of law" in 2014, a series of judicial system reforms represented by the post system and the judges' responsibility system have been comprehensively deepened. The wave of rule of law informatization that began in 2016 has extensively combined information technology such as big data and artificial intelligence with judicial law enforcement work in various fields such as investigation, procuratorial, trial, enforcement, administrative law enforcement, legal services, and judicial administration, further improving the level of modernization of the judicial system and judicial capacity. To a large extent, the process of institutional change is basically consistent with the changing trend of perceived justice. Detached from the foundation of institutional reform, public opinion propaganda alone is unlikely to create a U-shaped trend of perceived justice.
The perceived trend of justice changes among respondents with litigation experience further supports the cornerstone role of institutional reform. The perceived justice of both those with and without litigation experience took 2013 as the inflection point, showing a trend of first falling and then rising. However, compared with the two, those with litigation experience perceive that the curve of justice changes much more. Because they have personally experienced the judiciary, these respondents have a more intuitive feeling about the judicial system, and are more likely to form objective judgments based on personal experience about judicial fairness and justice, and are less susceptible to public opinion propaganda.
This trend of group perception of justice shows that since 2014, the general policy of "comprehensively governing the country according to law" and a series of judicial and law enforcement system reforms have actually changed the litigation experience. At the same time, although the evaluation of judicial fairness and justice by those without litigation experience is generally higher than that of those with litigation experience, the macro change trend of justice perceived by the two groups is basically the same. This further shows that public opinion propaganda is generally in line with the pace of institutional reform, and although ordinary people without litigation experience are more susceptible to the influence of public opinion propaganda, their perception of justice has not departed from the reality of the system.
In addition, the performance of local governments in acting in accordance with the law, fighting crime, and punishing corruption has a strong positive effect on the public's perception of justice, reflecting the "radiation effect" of rule of law publicity and system reform. Most of the population has limited professional legal knowledge and no litigation experience, and their legal awareness can hardly be said to be purely due to the reflection of the judicial system. In his thinking and cognition, it is more about blurring judicial organs such as public security, procuratorates, and courts with the government as a whole, and transferring the perception of the government's rule of law performance to the perception of judicial justice. To a certain extent, the public may have confused the connotation of government administration according to law and judicial fairness and justice. However, in the context of Chinese society, this cognitive transfer should not be understood as a simple cognitive error.
On the one hand, the separation of politics and law is a tradition in Chinese society from ancient times to the present. In the perception of the common people, the judiciary also belongs to the broad sense of "government", and the judiciary has the dual status of legal professionals and government officials. Whether it is fighting crime, punishing corruption, or even various grassroots social governance work, the judiciary is deeply involved, and there is no real separation between the judiciary and local governments.
On the other hand, judicial fairness and justice are inseparable from the level of local government rule of law. The high degree of embedding of judicial personnel in local administrative structures and interpersonal networks determines that some judicial decisions are inevitably influenced positively or negatively by local governments, which is why the establishment of courts across administrative divisions is included in the next stage of judicial reform agenda. From the perspective of individual trials, judges have reason to incorporate local governance needs in addition to legal factors, so as to achieve the unity of political, legal and social effects in adjudication. In this sense, to let the people fully feel the fairness and justice of the judiciary, it is not only the task of the judicial organs, but also the comprehensive improvement of the level of local rule of law governance.
5.2 Analysis of the mechanism of perceiving differences in justice groups
If the national legal concept is the consensus of the whole society, then the scene legal concept is more manifested in the differentiated understanding of fairness and justice by different social groups. The regression analysis shows that the concept of scene law is an important factor in shaping people's perception of justice, and there are significant differences in the perception of justice among groups of different genders, ages, regions, education levels, and social classes.
Specifically, in terms of the evaluation of judicial fairness and justice, female respondents are higher than male respondents, elderly respondents are higher than young respondents, rural respondents are higher than urban respondents, local residents are higher than immigrants, low-educated people are higher than highly educated people, and the middle class of society (respondents who self-rated their socioeconomic status as lower-middle, middle-class, and upper-middle) is higher than that of the strata at both ends (respondents who self-rated their socioeconomic status as inferior and superior).
The above group differences are not surprising, and group cognitive differences based on social structure are widespread in all areas. As far as perceived justice is concerned, the causes of group differences generally include the following three aspects:
First, the differences in social experience and living environment of different groups have led to different feelings and expectations of different groups on justice and law enforcement. For example, the higher evaluation of the elderly may be due to the fact that they have experienced the long history of development and change of China's judicial system and have a deeper understanding of the progress of the rule of law. At the same time, older people express their views more conservatively, cautiously, and less negatively than young people.
Second, there are inherent differences in the judiciary in different regions. For example, empirical studies have shown that judicial organs in different regions have obvious differences in the way they respond to public opinion in trials, and the intensity and discretionary standards for cracking down on violations and crimes are also different, so people in different regions naturally have different feelings about judicial fairness and justice.
Third, different groups of people do not have the same understanding and requirements for judicial fairness and justice. For example, highly educated people tend to have higher requirements for judicial fairness and justice, which leads to a decline in their evaluation of the current situation of judicial and law enforcement fairness.
What is more noteworthy is the changing trend of the influence of the legal concept of the scene. Since 2013, whether it is divided by gender, age, region, education level, and social class, the group differences in perception of justice have shown a significant narrowing trend. In other words, the influence of social structure on perceived justice has continued to weaken since 2013, and different groups tend to have the same evaluation of justice and law enforcement fairness and justice.
In 2013, 67.1% of rural residents believed that justice and law enforcement were fair, while the proportion of urban residents was only 52%, a difference of 15.1%. By 2019, 80.4% of rural residents believed that justice and law enforcement were fair, and 78.7% of urban residents, and the difference between the two was only 1.7%. In just six years, the urban-rural gap in perception of justice has been almost erased.
The reasons for this phenomenon are diverse. Again, take the urban-rural gap as an example. For a long time, there have been two completely different sets of logic in the urban and rural judicial systems - the former mainly serves the process of economic development and urbanization, emphasizes the guarantee of the rule of rules, and the image of the judicial profession is often separated from the life of citizens; The latter is mainly oriented to resolving conflicts between acquaintances, maintaining local order, and promoting rural revitalization, with a stronger localization color, and a closer combination between the judiciary and the local society. This makes it easier for rural dwellers than urban dwellers to build trust in the judiciary.
However, in recent years, the large-scale movement of rural and urban populations, coupled with the diversification of information dissemination channels, has eliminated the differences in perception of judicial fairness between different groups due to information differences. In particular, the popularity of the Internet and the emergence of smart phones have enabled people from different backgrounds to exchange information and opinions on the Internet, and then form similar perceptions. At the same time, with the acceleration of urbanization, more and more rural residents have entered the city, accepted urban life, and formed a consensus on the rule of law.
In essence, with the urbanization, modernization and informatization of China's society, the scene legal concept rooted in the traditional cultural field and acquaintance society has gradually been replaced by the national legal concept implemented from top to bottom, and the consensus on the rule of law in the whole society is germinating.
5.3 Analysis of the impact of litigation experience on perceptual justice mechanisms
In order to understand the change mechanism of perceived justice, in addition to starting from external perspectives (the influence of the external environment) such as the view of national law and scene law, we cannot ignore the internal perspective (the influence of personal experience). The impact of the parties' litigation experience provides a good entry point. The results of the previous analysis show that under other conditions, the evaluation of judicial fairness and justice by those with litigation experience is significantly lower than that of those without litigation experience, and litigation experience has a strong negative effect on the perception of justice. The mechanism behind this effect is worth exploring.
In view of the negative effect of litigation experience, the "informed disenchantment" theory provides a traditional interpretation path. This theory holds that before the parties enter the litigation, their understanding of the judiciary mainly stems from public opinion propaganda and subjective speculation, and it is easy to have unrealistically high expectations for the process and outcome of the litigation. After experiencing litigation, the parties lost their high expectations because they understood the real judiciary and returned to their rational understanding of justice. As a result, the parties shifted from blindly expecting the "enchantment" state of justice, and after personally experiencing litigation and "knowing", they turned to the "disenchanted" state of returning to rationality. The gap between ideals and reality is often accompanied by a lower evaluation of judicial fairness and justice.
It is undeniable that the theory of "informed disenchantment" has its explanatory power, and the gap between ideal and reality objectively exists. But the theory also has significant limitations.
First, in the information age, the information gap generated by unknowledge is rapidly narrowing. In the past, even if most litigants studied law, it was difficult for them to grasp judicial policies, legal thinking and "many specific operations" in trials, and it was easy to feel disappointed and disillusioned when participating in litigation. Today, the channels for obtaining legal information are becoming more diversified and popular, and it is easy for parties to search and learn all kinds of required legal knowledge in various online communities and public platforms. "Unknowing" is becoming less and less, and the "disenchantment" effect is diluted.
Second, the popularity of online media has made one-way "enchantment" more difficult. It is difficult to effectively control online media, and public opinion propaganda with different positions and deviating values exists at the same time. Our statistical analysis shows that regular surfing of the Internet leads to lower evaluations of judicial fairness and justice, which means that netizens are more susceptible to negative online public opinion than positive rule of law advocacy. It can be seen that the "enchantment" effect of public opinion propaganda has been further weakened in the Internet era, and even produced the effect of reverse "enchantment".
Furthermore, the changes in the influence of litigation experience also reflect the limitations of the "informed disenchantment" theory. From the perspective of the range of influence, the negative impact of litigation experience on the parties' perception of justice reached its peak in 2013, and since then its influence has continued to weaken, and by 2019, it was only 2/3 of its peak; from the perspective of time, the change curve of perceived justice for those without litigation experience is relatively flat, while the curve of those with litigation experience first falls to the bottom and then climbs rapidly with 2013 as the dividing point, showing a clear U-shape. This suggests that "informed disenchantment", if it still exists, is becoming less and less common after 2013.
In the past 10 years, China's judicial system has been in a state of rapid development and continuous change, people with richer information channels and greater access to information have become relatively "mature", their understanding of justice has been deepened, and their perception of judicial fairness and justice is gradually decoupled from their own litigation experience.
In addition to the "informed disenchantment" theory, an explanatory path worthy of further empirical testing is the intersection of distributive justice and procedural justice. From the perspective of distributive justice, the essence of judicial adjudication is value judgment and benefit distribution, and the litigation structure of "two opposites" determines that the outcome of adjudication will inevitably lead to profits for one party and damage to the other, and then produce completely different feelings about justice. Relevant empirical studies more intuitively show that the parties' evaluation of judicial fairness largely depends on the outcome of the litigation - we profit to believe that justice is just, and our damage is attributed to judicial unfairness.
In civil litigation, the proportion of the party who profits tends to be close to 50%, while in criminal and administrative proceedings, the proportion of natural persons profiting is even lower. This means that more than half of respondents who have litigation experience may be inclined to believe that justice is unfair because of the losses they have suffered. This inference is reflected in the data: for those with litigation experience, the proportion of respondents who believe that justice is fair and just has never exceeded half, with its highest point (2006 and 2017) reaching close to 50%, while the lowest point (2013) was only 23.1%.
From the perspective of procedural justice, although the Chinese people have a tradition of "emphasizing substance over procedure", the impact of procedural justice elements, including procedural control, impartiality, party participation, personal dignity and transparency, on the subjective feelings of the parties is difficult to deny, but the degree of influence of different elements is different.
From the data point of view, on the one hand, the proportion of people with litigation experience who agree with judicial fairness and justice fell to 23.1% around 2013, which means that a considerable number of parties do not feel judicial fairness and justice even if they win the case. Consequential determinism is difficult to explain this phenomenon, and can only be attributed to the influence of procedural values.
On the other hand, the proportion of parties feeling fairness and justice returned to around 50% in 2017, considering that the proportion of natural persons who profit is actually less than 50%, it can be reasonably inferred that there is a situation where the losing party still recognizes judicial fairness and justice, which is obviously also related to procedural justice. Therefore, although the impact of the parties' litigation experience depends to a large extent on the outcome of the litigation, the impact of the litigation process cannot be ignored.
6. Conclusion
This paper presents the general picture and trend of Chinese people's perception of justice from the perspective of empirical analysis. Data analysis based on 55,075 samples at six time points shows that in the 14 years from 2006 to 2019, Chinese people generally had positive evaluations of judicial and law enforcement fairness, but there were obvious differences in the perception of judicial fairness and justice among different social groups based on gender, age, household registration, education level, social class and other social structural factors.
Generally speaking, the perception of judicial fairness and justice among the Chinese people, including various social groups, showed a U-shaped trend, that is, it declined slowly from 2006 to 2013 and rose rapidly after 2013. Individual litigation experience has a negative effect on the perception of justice, but this negative effect has narrowed since 2013, indicating that the current state of justice and the expectations of those involved in litigation are still not matching, but the gap is narrowing. There is a significant positive correlation between local governments acting in accordance with the law, fighting crime, and punishing corruption, indicating that the achievements of local governments in regional governance, anti-corruption and clean government have a positive radiation effect on the public's perception of justice. The change mechanism of perceived justice is complex and pluralistic, but the main driving force comes from the dominance of the national legal view, the dilution of the scene legal view, and the influence of individual litigation experience.
Limited by the sample size and granularity of the research data, this paper only makes a preliminary exploration of the macro change trend and potential impact mechanism of the Chinese people's perception of justice, and some interesting findings deserve more in-depth study.
For example, what are the differences in the perception of judicial fairness and justice among different social classes? How do different social groups understand and view judicial fairness and justice? How do parties understand the relationship between the litigation process, the outcome of the adjudication and judicial fairness and justice? How exactly do the elements of procedural justice affect the perception of justice? What impact does the enforcement of refereeing have on the perception of justice? How to specifically evaluate the impact of a series of judicial system and mechanism reforms on people's perception of justice in recent years? Wait a minute.
This paper aims to provide a blueprint for further research on perceived justice. To continuously improve the people's perception of justice, it is necessary to carry out empirical research with a smaller incision and a deeper understanding of the above problems.