Editor's note:

More than 1,500 legal professionals from all over the world discussed topics from anti-domestic violence to challenges posed by the Internet at the week-long 22nd Congress on the Law of the World. The conference started in Beijing on Monday and concluded in Shanghai on Friday. China Daily reporters Liu Li and Sun Shangwu covered selected topics at the panel discussion meetings.

Domestic violence

China should introduce a special law to ban and prevent domestic violence in order to strengthen the current legislation protecting victims, said a law expert.

The country's top legislature revised the Marriage Law in 2001, the first law in China to include the issue of domestic violence, said Chen Mingxia, a researcher with the Institute of Law at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. However, many clauses in the law are too vague to be implemented in the real world, Chen said.

For example, the definition of domestic violence focuses on physical violence. Psychological maltreatment and intimidation should also be seen as forms of domestic violence, Chen said.

The current law also fails to protect divorced spouses, Chen said, because it just covers violence involving family members. According to the law, victims have the right to ask for compensation, but few successful examples have been reported so far because of a lack of certain law procedures, she said.

Since a draft legislation on prohibiting domestic violence was submitted to the National People's Congress in March 2003, Chen said she is optimistic that this law will eventually be passed in China.

Domestic violence is an issue that has grabbed the attention of the country's legal experts since the 1990s,

In the middle of 1990s, China published an official investigation on women's status, showing about 90 million women nationwide were regularly beaten by their husbands.

Global judicial education co-operation

All nations in the world, whether countries under civil law or common law, should increase co-operation in judicial education in order to better cope with the globalization in legal systems, according to a senior judge of the United States.

Judicial education and training has largely been considered to be local and insular because many people regard each country's legal system as unique, according to Clifford Wallace, senior judge and chief judge emeritus of the United States Court of Appeals.

"I think much of the individuality among various countries' judicial education results from not being sufficiently exposed to other methods," Wallace said.

As the legal community is globalizing, judges increasingly look to foreign law in interpreting their laws and solving new problems, according to Wallace.

It is time to share ideas and help each other in a broader context, said Wallace, adding that the rule of law and the concept of justice are universal and fundamental principles.

To realize the broad potential of judicial education, all countries should establish a worldwide effort that supplements, rather than replaces, existing local and regional judicial education systems, he noted.

In some parts of the world, judicial education programmes are said to differ depending on whether the legal system is based on civil law or common law, Wallace added.

"Although existing education systems have been indispensable in educating judges, these localized efforts should be supplemented by increased dialogue with courts from other states, countries and continents to enhance and continually enrich what and how judges learn," he said.

Media supervision vs judicial independence

A senior court official called on the media to expose corruption and illegal activities in the judiciary.

"Judiciary is the last guarantee of social justice," said Jing Hanchao, executive vice-president of the Hebei Provincial High People's Court.

"The press has the responsibility to publicize judicial corruption and other illegal behaviours of judicial workers,"

Meanwhile, he emphasized the importance of such intervention from outside the court over the independence of the judiciary.

"The news media should pay more attention to this in an attempt to help build a favourable environment for the court," he said.

However, he stressed that news media should not include casual commentary on the cases that have not yet been concluded in court.

"To make a partial report over the facts of cases is of course permitted," the official said.

A call for a cyber-security law

With the fight against terrorism online, China should legislate over cyber-security in the Internet era, said Ma Minhu, professor at the Xi'an Jiaotong University.

"The network has become a target for attack from criminals," he said.

The law should be a preventive one, not like the traditional laws that aimed to punish violators, Ma added.

Although there is no specific law on the emergency network safety, Ma said that some administrative regulations have outlined how to deal with the situation.

For example, the network safety protection regulation by the Ministry of Public Security, the telecommunications regulation and a relevant regulation by the People's Bank of China all have emergency treatment recommendations.

He also advised adding online property to the Property Law. This proposal is being discussed by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress and a vote is expected next year.