Procedural Justice or Procedural Excuse? Strategic Adjudication of Eminent Domain Cases in Chinese Courts

Abstract: This paper is the second part of the first comprehensive examination of how China’s courts adjudicate eminent domain cases. Our new dataset, including 2,376 decisions issued by all of the 31 high people’s courts in China from 2014 to 2017, confirms the dominance of procedure in courts’ adjudication of eminent domain cases. What’s more important, utilizing the revision of China’s administrative litigation law as an exogenous shock, we are able to identify whether the emphasis on procedure is because of judges’ belief in procedural justice or because procedural rules provide a convenient, cost-effective way for judges to make decisions, which we call it a strategic choice. Specifically, the revision of China’s administration litigation law, which took effect on May 1, 2015, significantly increased the workload of judges by requiring Chinese courts to accept cases without a preliminary screening as far as there is a plausible cause. The sudden increase of workload will affect the behaviour patterns of judges with regard to procedural arguments if the emphasis on procedure is mainly a strategic move; while should have no effect if it is a belief. Our regression results confirm that the upholding rate of procedural mistake (PM) claims of the property rights holders significantly increases after the reform, the increase is mainly contributed by courts experienced larger increase in workload. Furthermore, we established that upholding PM is less effective in protecting property rights holders after the reform, especially in courts experienced larger increase in workload. Overall this empirical study not only reveals the dominance of procedure in Chinese courts’ adjudication of eminent domain disputes, but also demonstrates that it is a strategic choice under the pressure of workload instead of a belief in procedural justice, and only provides weak protection for property rights holders.