Associate Professor Sun Haibo from the College gave an academic lecture on the Rediscovery of “Like Cases”: the Construction of Criteria for Judging the Similarity of Cases at the Research Office of Supreme People's Court on the afternoon of 13 Dec, 2019.

The lecture was moderated by Deputy Director of the Research Office of the Court Zhou Jiahai. Deputy Director of the Trial Administration Office of the Court Judge Liu Shude, Prof. Zhang Qi from the Law School Peking of University, Director of the General Division of the Research Office of the Court Yuan Chunxiang and Li Yulin from the Civil Division of the Office were the guests of discussion.

"Like cases be treated alike" has been an important topic of judicial reform in recent years and an urgent concern of the Supreme People's Court. According to his latest research, Sun Haibo systematically explained this problem from five aspects. Firstly, focusing on the existence of the case-like judgment standards, he introduced two long-standing positions in the academic arena, one is the skepticism and the other is the finite affirmation. Secondly, combing the common types of different viewpoints under the premise of the existence of the criterion of affirmation, he also pointed out that these views are more or less problematic in some aspects, and the truly feasible standard is the comprehensive mode of "key facts + case dispute focus + normative purpose". Thirdly, he suggested that it is necessary to determine the basic point of comparison of the facts of the case and to concentrate on the key facts of the case. He said that this stage is mainly formal evaluation. Fourthly, when entering the substantive stage of judgment, the comparison of similarity and the differences of the cases should be carried out, and in the process which the normative goal as a substantive reason must be especially introduced. Finally, combining with the development of China's current case instruction system, Sun discussed how to judge the similarity in guiding cases.

The guests highly affirmed Sun's research results, and claimed that if such a kind of case judgment standard could be found, it would play an important guiding role in solving the problem of "different adjudication in the similar cases" in practice. From their own angles, the participants also expressed their views on the criteria for deciding class cases, and put forward relevant constructive suggestions on the following research by Sun Haibo.

At last, the lecture came to a successful conclusion with warm applause.