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Face-work in Chinese routine criminal trials
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
Abstract
This article examines the performative aspect of face-to-face interactions among various legal actors and defendants in routine criminal trials in China. Using 105 trial videos as empirical data, the author develops a face-work framework to understand how an individual judge's “face”—signifying judges' legal and political roles, and their professional status—is established, protected, and enhanced during courtroom interactions. The study shows that the legal face of judges can be established by some characterizations of the nature of criminal trials such as the demarcation of legal space, the speed of the trial, and the apprising of rights to the defendants. Nevertheless, the legal face can also be disrupted by trial interactions due to judges' lack of judicial authority. Hence, Chinese judges maintain their authority through the establishment of their political face. They also use both their political face and legal face to establish their situational professional status. These interactions often lead to punitive and coercive measures against defendants in trials. While the article focuses on routine criminal trials in China, the face-work framework has the potential to explain courtroom interactions in other types of social contexts and legal proceedings.
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- Copyright © 2023 Law and Society Association.
Footnotes
Earlier versions of the article were presented at the 2021 Law and Society Annual Meeting and 2022 “Law, Courts, and Judges in Comparative Perspective” Conference at Tsinghua University.
How to cite this article: Li, Sitao. 2023. “Face-Work in Chinese Routine Criminal Trials.” Law & Society Review 57(2): 254–275. https://doi.org/10.1111/lasr.12651
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