Connecting Supervisor Procedural Justice to Perceived Tensions With Litigants Among Chinese Judges

• Published date: 01 January 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00938548231206832
• Author: Yao Ding,Ivan Y. Sun,Yuning Wu,Qianwei Zhao
• Date: 01 January 2024

CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND BEHAVIOR, 2024, Vol. 51, No. 1, January 2024, 107 –126.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/00938548231206832

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© 2023 International Association for Correctional and Forensic Psychology

107

CONNECTING SUPERVISOR PROCEDURAL

JUSTICE TO PERCEIVED TENSIONS WITH

LITIGANTS AMONG CHINESE JUDGES

YAO DING

Shandong University

IVAN Y. SUN

University of Delaware

YUNING WU

Wayne State University

QIANWEI ZHAO

Baylor University

Recent literature on procedural justice has consistently shown positive organizational outcomes resulting from fair and just

treatment by supervisors. This study expands the current literature by assessing the beneficial effect of being treated fairly

and justly by supervisors in court settings. Based on survey data from Chinese judges, this study analyzes the direct linkage

between supervisor procedural justice and judges’ perceived tensions with litigants and their indirect relationship through

trust in litigants and external procedural justice. The results of structural equation modeling indicate that supervisor justice is

positively related to trust in litigants and external procedural justice and negatively associated with tensions with litigants.

The indirect connection between supervisor justice and tensions with litigants is mainly through external procedural justice.

Female and seasoned judges are more willing than their male and less-experienced counterparts to treat litigants in a proce-

durally just manner.

Keywords: supervisor procedural justice; judges’ perceived tensions with litigants; Chinese judges; external procedural

justice; trust in litigants

INTRODUCTION

On January 12, Zhou Chunmei, a judge and a mother of two, was found dead from multiple

stab wounds in an underground parking lot at her home in Changsha, capital of Hunan

province. . . Local police arrived at the scene at around 7:30 am and detained a suspect,

AUTHORS’ NOTE: This study is partially supported by two grants (China Postdoctoral Science Foundation,

No. 2023M732049 and Shandong Provincial Postdoctoral Science Foundation, No. SDBX2023085) awarded

to the first author. The study’s findings and discussions do not necessarily reflect the policies and positions of

the funding agencies. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Ivan Y. Sun, Professor

and Director of Graduate Studies, Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice, University of Delaware,

Newark, DE 19716. e-mail: isun@udel.edu.

1206832CJBXXX10.1177/00938548231206832Criminal Justice and BehaviorDing et al. / Tension With Litigants

research-article2023

108 CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND BEHAVIOR

surnamed Xiang, who was an “old friend” of the victim, according to the police. . . Zhou, in

her role as a judge, had refused to bend the law in a labor-related lawsuit that Xiang had filed

in her court months ago. (Askhar, China Daily, 2021, April 14)

Judge Zhou was one of several Chinese judges who have been killed by court litigants

since 2016. The murder of Judge Zhou shocked the entire country and stirred widespread

concern about judicial personnel’s well-being and safety. Tensions between judges and liti-

gants resulting primarily from violence against judges have surfaced as a serious safety con-

cern in China (He & Feng, 2021). These attacks elucidate judges’ adversarial work

environments as replete with potential conflicts with litigants (Chamberlain & Miller, 2009).

Studies have revealed that safety threats and stress can shape judges’ decision-making capaci-

ties and decorum and cause psychosocial and emotional problems, further impeding the

impartiality of the judicial system (Miller & Richardson, 2006; Rothmann & Rossouw, 2020).

This study investigates factors related to judges’ perceived tensions with litigants in

China. Tension signals a complex psychological construct consisting of attitudes and ten-

dencies, such as distrust, suspicion, fear, hostility, and even a desire for dominance or

revenge against others (Hafeznia et al., 2013). The current study delineates a theoretical

model linking the exogenous source of perceived supervisor procedural justice and the

mediating mechanisms of litigant trustworthiness and perceived external procedural justice

to judges’ perceptions of tensions with court litigants. This study contributes to the literature

in three areas. First, it incorporates the procedural justice theory into judicial fields. Tyler’s

(1990) seminal work posited that people’s perceptions of police legitimacy and willingness

to cooperate with the police are chiefly linked to the fair and equitable treatment received

during police–citizen encounters. Recent research has extended the procedural justice

model into police agencies by arguing that being fairly and justly treated by supervisors (the

so-called internal procedural justice or perceived supervisor procedural justice) can breed

officers’ willingness to treat the public (e.g., external procedural justice) similarly (Van

Craen, 2016). Although scholars have tested the applicability of the procedural justice the-

ory in court settings (e.g., Connor, 2019; Grootelaar & van den Bos, 2018; He & Feng,

2021; Shook et al., 2021), the plausible linkages between internal procedural justice and

judges’ attitudes toward litigants remain severely underresearched.

Second, this study expands the available literature on judges’ perceived tensions with liti-

gants. A recent review (Rothmann & Rossouw, 2020) of the literature on judges’ well-being

identified merely three studies touching on judges’ safety concerns (Chamberlain & Miller,

2009; Flores et al., 2009; Miller et al., 2010), a topic closely related to judges’ tensions with

courtroom participants. These studies relied on information from a rather small sample of inter-

view or survey respondents and measured single-item stressors of safety concerns without con-

sidering the complexity and multidimensional nature of judges’ tensions with litigants.

Finally, this study advances the internationalization of criminological literature by study-

ing Chinese judges’ perceptions of court litigants and administrators. Although empirical

studies on Chinese judicial behavior have increased in recent decades (e.g., An et al., 2011;

He, 2021; Li et al., 2018; Liu & Li, 2019; Lu et al., 2013; Stern, 2010; Wei & Xiong, 2020;

Xiong et al., 2018), judges’ attitudes toward litigants stay elusive in this vein of inquiry.

Supervisor justice could be particularly relevant in China due to the absence of judicial

independence in individual judges’ decision-making and the court administrators’ control

over judges’ work assignments and performance and promotion evaluations.