In the past a dozen or so years, people's tribunals have been marginalized to some extent in the course of modernization, normalization and standardization of courts. On the other hand, however, the effective settlement of social disputes at the grass-roots level is gradually highlighting the need for the functioning of people's tribunals. Meanwhile, major changes have also taken place in the conditions of people's tribunals themselves. Under the new historical conditions, China should re-examine the status and functions of people's tribunals, appropriately increase the number of people's tribunals, reasonably adjust the regional distribution of people's tribunals, furnish people's tribunals with more man power, and strengthen the functions of people's tribunals, so as to promote the development and reform of grassroots courts. The above approaches have been partly supported by the relevant judicial practice of a court in P County of S Province and can be theoretically demonstrated from the following three perspectives: the relative limitations on jurisdictions, the dominant thinking on the development of people's court, and the main characters of the adjudication work of basic courts. |