The Judicial Yüan serves as an administrative and budgetary agency for four agencies. The Ministry of Justice (Ssŭ-fa Hsing-chêng-pu) is, obviously, the prosecuting agency, attached to the executive in the United States, but made a part of the general judicial system in China. The Administrative Court (Hsing-chêng Fa-yüan) is an agency only potentially important; so is the Commission for the Disciplinary Punishment of Public Officers (Kung-wu-yüan Ch'êng-chieh Wei-yüan-hui). The Yüan President is ex officio chief magistrate of the Supreme Court (Tsui-kao Fa-yüan). Wang Shih-chieh says of this Yüan:
Because of the fact that the Judicial Yüan is itself not an organ of adjudication, and since all affairs concerning prosecution at law are handled by the Ministry of Justice, the actual work to be performed by the Judicial Yüan is very simple and light. In addition to framing the budget for the Yüan itself and approving the general estimates of the organs under it, the Judicial Yüan has only three further duties to perform: (1) to bring before the Legislative Yüan legislative measures connected with the Judicial Yüan and its sub-organs; (2) to petition the President of the National Government with respect to such cases as special pardon, commutation of sentence, and the restoration of civil rights; and (3) to unify the interpretation of laws and orders, and changes in judicial procedure.[27]
With peace, reconstruction and prosperity, the Judicial Yüan might acquire importance through its control of the administrative and technical aspects of the court system. Meanwhile, courts are more closely associated with their respective levels or areas of government than with one another in a unified judicial system.
The Examination Yüan, with a President and Vice-President, is composed of a central Yüan office, which supervises two organs: the Ministry of Personnel (Ch'uan-hsü Pu), operating a selective promotion system, and the Examinations Commission (K'ao-hsüan Wei-yüan-hui). In absolute numbers, few examinations have been held. In practice, standard recruitment technique continues to involve introduction, influence, or family connections. The familiarity of such devices in China at least gives them a high polish, and precludes utter inefficiency. Under the circumstances, the Examination Yüan finds scope for valuable, creative work in the preparation of administrative studies and analyses of very considerable importance.
The Control Yüan is of interest to Westerners, because of the novelty of its functions. Through the courtesy of the Yüan President, a full official memorandum on the structure and procedure was prepared, surveying the work of the Yüan during the course of the war. This is reproduced as Appendices [I (E)] and [I (F)] below.[28] Some of the unofficial observers, both Western and Chinese, felt that the Yüan possessed further enormous possibilities of activity, and that the need for controlment was very great indeed. In general, the Yüan resembles its legislative, judicial and examination coordinates, in that the war-time executive growth has relegated it to a secondary position.
Decrease in the importance of the yüan system during hostilities cannot be taken, by a too simple cause-and-effect argument, as proof of the unwieldy or impractical character of this five-power system. Measured on a scale of other world governments, success is slow; but it is enormous in contrast to other Chinese central political institutions. At present, it is most improbable that the form of government will be changed, save in the event of catastrophe beyond all reckoning
FOOTNOTES:
[1] See Sun Yat-sen, San Min Chu I, Shanghai, 1927, henceforth cited as "Price translation," p. 296 ff.; or d'Elia, Paschal M., S. J., The Triple Demism of Sun Yat-sen, Wuchang, 1931, p. 348 ff.
[2] An attempt to correlate Sun's democratic theory with Western concepts is made in the present author's Political Doctrines of Sun Yat-sen, cited, p. 107-9. The notion is clearly put in L'Esprit des Lois, Book 11, ch. 2.