From “Online Trial” to “Network Governance”: A Perspective on the Functional Transformation of Internet Courts

Abstract

Internet courts in the 1.0 era achieved initial success in “online trial” and facilitation of the people’s access to judicial services, yet lacked the particularity that special courts should have in terms of organization, cases and procedures, making them difficult to fulfill the function of governance of network society. Compared with rule and management, governance has the features of decentralization, broad scope, and co-construction of rules. Features of network society are in line with the structure of social governance theory. To fulfill their function of governance of network society, internet courts in the 2.0 era, as the integrator of multiple centers and cyberspace as well as the analyzer of internet rules, need to improve in terms of organization, cases and procedures: In terms of organization, consider upgrading internet courts to be intermediate courts and identifying them as cross-region courts in cyberspace; in terms of cases, redefine the essence and extension of “online cases” with elements including wholly cyberspace_x005f related civil and commercial dispute resolution, new business format management on internet platforms, and governance of data-related rights; and in terms of procedures, improve Internet courts’ case selection procedures, judgement effect extension procedures, investigation procedures for independent evidence collection of internet cases, and automatic enforcement procedures ensuring the instant enforcement of judgment, so as to promote a mature and complete legal framework for cyberspace governance.

Keywords

internet courts / governance / centralized jurisdiction / internet platforms / network governance

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