Research on merging district courts into first instance courts

The information was stated by the Supreme People's Court in a document dated February 28 sent to the Chief Justices of the People's Courts of provinces and cities regarding the participation in giving opinions on the organization plan at the People's Court.

The Supreme People's Court is planning to reorganize the People's Court of First Instance on the basis of rearranging the current district courts. The reorganization will be based on criteria such as: number of cases to be resolved, convenient location, economic characteristics, geographical location, population density, and regional culture.

Accordingly, in special urban areas such as Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, the number of cases that must be resolved and tried by each People's Court of First Instance located in the inner city area is from 3,000 cases per year or more. People's Court of First Instance in the suburban area must resolve and try from 1,000 cases per year or more.

In rural plain areas, the court of first instance must resolve and try 800 cases or more per year; in mountainous areas, it is 200 cases or more per year.

The merged People's Courts must be geographically adjacent and have convenient transportation. Each district-level court subject to the arrangement will be merged with at least one adjacent district-level court.

For mountainous areas, because districts often have large areas but low population density, the number of cases is not large. Therefore, if only applying the criteria of the amount of work to be resolved, the area of ​​operation of the first instance courts after the merger will be too large, causing difficulties for people to go to court.

For this area, the Supreme People's Court believes that it is necessary to add the criterion that the distance from the first instance court to the farthest place in that locality must not exceed 50 km. In case both criteria on the number of cases and distance are not met, the distance criterion shall be applied.

For island areas, there will be no regional court of first instance in each island district. Instead, judges and court officials will be arranged at the adjacent regional court of first instance to receive people, handle petitions and conduct mobile trials of various types of cases on a monthly basis.

In addition, the Supreme People's Court proposed to prioritize locations with newly invested headquarters in the recent period and some works in the project to upgrade and build People's Courts at all levels, phase 1.

The Supreme People's Court requests the People's Courts of provinces and cities to study and contribute their opinions. If there are other opinions, they need to be analyzed, clarified and specifically proposed.

Recently, the Politburo and the Secretariat issued Conclusion 127 assigning the Party Committee of the Supreme People's Court and the Party Committee of the Supreme People's Procuracy to preside over and coordinate with relevant agencies to research and develop a project and report to the Politburo on the system of courts and procuracies at the local level. The orientation is not to organize district-level People's Courts and People's Procuracies.

Agencies shall report to the Politburo for the above policy before seeking opinions from Party committees and Party organizations, no later than March 9. After that, the Party Committee of the People's Court and the People's Procuracy shall receive and complete the project to seek opinions from provincial Party committees, city Party committees, Party committees directly under the Central Committee, agencies, organizations, and Central Party committees no later than March 12; report to the Politburo and the Secretariat before March 27; and submit to the Central Executive Committee before April 7.

The Vietnamese People's Court system is currently divided into four levels, including the Supreme People's Court; High People's Court; People's Courts of provinces and centrally run cities; People's Courts of districts, towns, and provincial cities. Military Courts at all levels include the Central Military Court; Military Courts of military regions and equivalent; and Regional Military Courts.