Sino-German Seminar on “Development of Rule of Law and Legal Education” Successfully Held at Tongji University

On the afternoon of December 1st, 2020, Sino-German Seminar on “Development of Rule of Law and Legal Education” was successfully held at C501 of the Sino-French Centre of Tongji University. Academician Wu Zhiqiang,Vice President of Tongji University, addressed on the opening ceremony.

Prof.Dr.Matthias Ruffert, Dean of Law School of Humboldt University, and Prof.Dr.Reinhard Singer, Prof.Dr.jur.Hans Christian Roehl, Dean of Law School of University of Konstanz, Prof.Dr.Astrid Stadler and Prof.Dr.Jochen Gloeckner,  Dr.Christian Bode,the former Secretary-General of DAAD,, Prof.Dr.Mueller Graff from Heidelberg University, Prof.Dr.Gregor Tuesing from University of Bonn, Prof.Dr.Ruediger Veil from the University of Munich, Prof.Dr.Bu Yuanshi from the University of Freiburg, Prof.Dr.Gu Ying, the Director of Training Center of the Shanghai High People’s Court, Prof.Dr.Chen Yi, Executive Deputy Director of the International Office of Tongji University, Prof.Jiang Huiling, Dean of Tongji Law School, Prof.Dr.Gao Xujun, and other faculties and students from Tongji Law School  and Sino-German School in Tongji University attended the seminar.

The opening ceremony was presided over by Prof. Jiang Huiling. Vice President Wu reviewed the deep historical relationship between Tongji University and Germany. He said : “Tongji Law School has maintained close and in-depth cooperation with well-known German law schools over these years. Since 2013, it has cooperated with Humboldt University and University of Konstanz in Germany. Also, the Sino-German Economic Law Forum has been held for 6 years achieving positive effects. Confronting with the challenge of COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the enthusiasm to communicate with experts from China and Germany has not been curbed”. Vice President Wu has expressed his gratitude to Dr.Christian Bode for his contribution to Tongji University. After that, Prof.Dr.Matthias Ruffert, Prof.Dr.jur.Hans Christian Roehl, and Prof.Dr.Astrid Stadler delivered speeches respectively. Among them, Prof.Dr.Astrid Stadler, who is also in charge of the Double Degree Program of Tongji University and Konstanz University, said that although the COVID-19 pandemic has brought some obstacles to students studying abroad, universities of both sides still try to help international students overcome these difficulties. She believes that Sino-German legal education exchanges will help Chinese and German students understand the similarities and differences in the rule of law, which conducive to jointly promoting the progress of legal education. And she once again welcome Chinese students to study in Germany.

After the opening ceremony, Prof.Dr.Gao Xujun and Prof.Dr.Singer prosided over the second session. Firstly, Prof.Jiang Huiling introduced some new developments of Rule of Law in China. He started with distinguishing "Rule of Law" from "Rule by Law" in Chinese context, with rule of law as the national strategy. Besides the legislative achievement of 7 branches of legal rules system, the government under rule of law, he focused on China's recent judicial reforms, including the court organization, judicial administration, judicial personnel management, procedural justice, ADR, and access to justice.

Dr.Chen Jielei gave her speech on “New Face of Chinese Civil Law with the New Civil Code”. She introduced that ancient Chinese legal system was characterised by "Heavy Punishment" and "No Distinction between Civil and Criminal Punishment". Then, she explained the main structure of the upcoming Chinese Civil Code. It not only codifies personality rights into a separate section innovatively, but also stipulates the Green Principle, movable property mortgages, personal information protection, and it adds several new types of typical contracts as well.

Prof.Dr.Veil from the University of Munich delivered a speech on the topic of "Sustainable Corporate Governance". He mainly analysed the reasons for the short-sightedness of corporate governance and discussed the considerations of the EU's upcoming "Sustainable Law". He believes that the social responsibility of the company is not necessarily be closely linked to the responsibilities of the board of directors. Otherwise, it might probably violate the interests of shareholders and the interests of the company.

Prof.Dr.Tuesing of the University of Bonn and Prof.Dr.Wang Qian of Tongji University discussed the challenges to the labour law under the COVID-19 pandemic and different governments’ reactions from the perspective of Sino-German comparative law. Prof.Dr.Tuesing introduced effects on the duties of employers and the rights of workers under several situations in respect of German Labour Law and regulations. While Prof.Dr.Wang Qian introduced the important measures taken by the Chinese government to combat with the COVID-19 pandemic, which includes the encouragement of working from home, staggered commuting for employees and encouraging employers to adopt salary adjustments and shorten working hours for their employees. She said that unfortunately, these measures have not been clearly stipulated in current legal regulations yet. Different from Germen law, there is no such a "Short-time Work Allowance" in China. After that, Prof.Dr.Singer from Humboldt University discussed from the perspective of the novel corona-virus and the Rule of Law. He mainly introduced a series of legal measures stipulated in the latest Amendments to Infectious Disease Protection Act in Germany, which includes legal measures such as wearing masks and maintaining social distance. He stressed that the intensity of specific measures should be determined according to the threshold of the infection status of the pandemic, and the "Appropriate Principle" should be well-applied. As for whether more stringent measures should be taken to combat COVID-19, he thought they could learn from the experience of Asian countries in successfully fighting the pandemic.

After the second session, Chinese and German scholars jointly discussed related topics of legal education. Prof.Dr.Graff of Heidelberg University said that the education system in Germany is very different from that in the United States. He expressed that the development of moot courts can improve students' soft abilities, such as negotiation management skills, reconciliation, questioning and communication skills. 

Prof.Dr.Zhang Taolue gave a report on “Moot Court as an Educational Tool to Enhance Law Students Skills”. He believes that moot courts are conducive to improving law students' translation ability, cooperation, debating skills and retrieval ability, and can also improve students' abilities to ask and summarize questions, and present their opinions to the judge efficiently.

Prof.Dr.Gloeckner of the University of Konstanz believes that law students need to grasp the importance of legal order. From an educational point of view, He pointed out that "Justice" itself may have rarely been covered by any specialized lecture, but there are more in-depth analyses throughout courses on various laws. In this way, elements of "Justice" are implicitly involved in every aspects of law. After that, from the perspective of Sino-German exchanges, Prof.Dr. BU Yuanshi from the University of Freiburg introduced the current situation of Chinese students who have obtained a doctorate degree in law in Germany. She has observed that since the 1990s, the number of doctoral degrees awarded to Chinese students in Germany has increased significantly. And they prefer to choose large cities and civil and commercial law as their research fields when they are studying in Germany. Prof.Dr.Gu Ying introduced the judge training and education of Shanghai High Court from a practical perspective. She gave a detailed introduction to the Shanghai Judge Training Centre and different training methods for judges, judge assistants, and clerks respectively. 

Finally, Prof.Dr.Gao Xujun of Tongji University introduced the relevant reforms of recent Chinese legal education. He pointed out that although China has made such reforms in legal teaching materials and state judicial examinations, it is still far from enough. He hopes that Chinese legal students should be cultivated with the ability to understand and interpret the law independently and also to have stronger ability to self-study. After reports, Chinese and German professors, students and other participants had full and in-depth discussions on some cutting-edge legal issues. Finally, Prof.Dr.JIANG Huiling, Prof.Dr.Graff of Heidelberg University, and Prof.Dr.Tuesing of Bonn University summarized the seminar, and they all hoped that the Sino-German dual methodology education will carry out more in-depth and comprehensive cooperation.

Sino-German Seminar on “Development of Rule of Law and Legal Education” was held to further strengthen Sino-German cooperation through equal, in-depth and heated discussions and mutual experience sharing with German universities based on existing cooperation. To jointly promote legal exchanges and cooperation between China and Germany academically and practically, Tongji Law School has always attached great importance to cooperation with Germany. Particularly, Tongji Law School has signed a dual degree program with Humboldt University and the University of Konstanz in 2013, and has engaged in cultivating more than 100 Chinese and German students so far. In addition, it has also signed cooperation agreements with the University of Bonn and Heidelberg University in 2014 and 2015 respectively.