Chinese judges study law at Que. university

UNIVERSITY SAYS PROGRAM HELPS ADVANCE HUMAN RIGHTS

Aprogram that allows Chinese judges to come to Montreal to study Quebec law is helping to advance human rights in China, according to the Montreal university that administers it. L’Universite de Montreal’s program offers Chinese judges the chance to study the fundamentals that underpin the province’s legal system, namely the combination of common and civil law as well as the administration of justice.

One of the school’s administrators says the program could eventually inspire reforms in China.

While the university has had links in China for 20 years, the judge’s program is a result of a cooperation agreement signed in 2014 between the school’s law faculty and China’s National College of Supreme Court Judges.

International affairs department vice-rector Guy Lefebvre believes that Quebec could help serve as a type of model to China as it overhauls its legislative system.

He says Quebec, a province with a civil code based on Napoleonic law, trades almost exclusively with countries that operate under common law.

“When (the Chinese) write, for example, a securities law, which is more Anglo-Saxon in origin, we are able to say how we manage to work in these systems,” he said.

Lefebvre says the program allows judges to do internships in the courts and chambers and offers them a chance to learn about Quebec’s legal system, without implying that one system is the better one.

He believes there is something admirable in the Chinese model, where “the collective is more important than the individual” and where compromise is valued over confrontation.

He said China has made some much-needed improvements to rules surrounding expropriations and intellectual property — and Quebec may have been an influence.

As an example, he said that families who are forced to move because of huge construction sites now get better compensation.

And China, the world champion of counterfeiting, is moving to insert the principles of intellectual property into its civil code.