The 17th Conference of the International Association of Procedural Law ("IAPL 2017 China") was held during 8th to 10th November 2017 in Tianjin University, which was co-held by the International Association of Procedural Law ("IAPL") and China Law Society ("CLS"), undertook by the China Civil Procedure Law Society ("CCPLS") and co-organized by the Desci Asset Management Ltd. The theme of IAPL 2017 China was "On Judicial Management From Comparative Perspective". More than 250 experts and scholars from over 20 countries including China, the United States, UK, Russia, France, Japan, Netherlands, Brazil, Argentina, South Korea and Chile attended this conference. Jiping Chen, the secretary of the Party organization and executive vice-president of CLS and Prof. Wenxian Zhang, the vice-president and the director of academic committee in CLS and director-general of Collaborative Innovation Center of Judicial Civilization ("CICJC") attended the opening ceremony of IAPL 2017 China.
The conference was divided into five thematic sessions: (1) Introductory Reports; (2) Case Management; (3) Court Management; (4) Structure of Court System; and (5) Fact-finding and Legal Reasoning. Except the first session as an introductory part, the latter four sessions were given by Chinese and foreign general reporters respectively.
Prof. Baosheng Zhang, the co-director of CICJC and Ph.D. Supervisor in China University of Political Science and Law, was invited to make a 30-minute English report titled "The Role of Fact-Finding in Legal Reasoning". With respect to the tendency in legal reasoning that people were keen on researching into substantial reasoning while ignoring that fact-finding plays a decisive role in the application of law, Prof. Zhang explicated the characteristics of fact-finding, the nature of inductive reasoning in court epistemology and the interaction among the prosecutor, the defendant and the fact-finder, argued that fact-finding shall serves as a way to discover the minor premise of legal reasoning and had an in-depth discussion on the justification of the fact-finding and legal reasoning. With an alive atmosphere, participants were inspired to discuss heatedly on the report.
Dr. Hanbing Gong, the lecturer of Henan University of Economics and Law also gave a 15-minute English report as the country-specific reporter titled "Rethinking Evidence Science: A New Interdisciplinary Trend in Fact-Finding".
The English Official Home Page of IAPL 2017 China: