By Jerome A. Cohen
Professor Chen Guangzhong (陈光中), emeritus professor at the Chinese University of Politics and Law (CUPL), is the “grand old man” of China’s criminal justice legislation. He played a prominent role in the drafting of the 1979 Criminal Procedure Law (CPL), the first in the PRC’s history.
In the mid-1950s, under deStalinized Soviet influence, drafts had been formulated but, because of the 1957-58 Anti-Rightist Campaign, the Sino-Soviet split, the Cultural Revolution and other political factors, the draft legislation was not enacted. After Mao’s death the drafting process was renewed, still influenced largely but not nominally by Soviet law, and legal scholars like Prof. Chen, who had been sidelined for two decades, began to play an important role.
(Prof. CHEN Guangzhong (2000); photo source)
By the time of the major 1996 CPL revisions, Prof. Chen was the leading figure shaping the revisions in a quiet struggle with Party, police and other officials who opposed many Western-style due process reforms. Chen, who briefly served as the President of CUPL and was the Inaugural President of the China CPL Society, trained most of the PRC’s many experts on criminal justice who have valiantly served with distinction as well as frustration not only in academe but also in government, the judiciary and the legal profession. He edited an important book in the late ‘90s about the problems confronting PRC adherence to and compliance with the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights(ICCPR), which the PRC signed over two decades ago but has still not ratified. Although retired, Prof. Chen retains considerable prestige in academic and legal circles that have fallen on hard times. He amply warrants our admiration and congratulations!