On 3rd May 2021, at the invitation of St. Petersburg State University(SPBU), associate professor Zhang Xingmei of Jilin University School of Law delivered a lecture online themed as Remote Court Hearing：A Theoretical Review and Normative Construction for teachers and students of law in SPBU. The lecture was hosted by Prof. Alexander Torgashev. Ms. Zhang focused her lecture on introducing the development and application of remote court hearing in China, especially during the epidemic period, which played an important role in guaranteeing the smooth running of judicial work. Ms. Zhang believed that remote court hearing facilitated the hearing to become technicalized, flexible, and paperless, and has progressive significance for improving the procedural engagement of the parties as well as promoting the benefit of litigation. However, because of the restriction of court hearing’s purposes, the justification of remote court hearing is rather relative. Although the essence of hearing procedure did not change due to this new approach of hearing, risks such as the reduce of personal experience, oral expression, rituality and transparency in court hearing also emerged. Targeting those drawbacks of remote court hearings, feasible constructions could be reinforced in aspects such as technical operation, starting methods and application scope.
This lecture has inspired teachers and students of SPBU on the issue of Internet + Hearing, they further discussed problems such as applicable objects of remote hearings and witnesses’ methods of appearance during the remote hearing. Prof. Alexander Torgashev expressed the sincere gratitude on Ms. Zhang’s marvelous sharing. This lecture has offered the consideration of frontier problem regarding civil procedure from Chinese perspective, presented the global vision and open pattern of Jilin University School of Law while enhancing the communication and cooperation between Jilin University School of Law and SPBU.
