The Law School of Southeast University and Nanjing Gulou District People's Procuratorate held a forum on cooperation and exchange between prosecution and university. Yan Chang, Procurator General of Gulou District People's Procuratorate, led a group of Deputy Procurators General, including Wu Hong, Zhu Lin, and Hu Chenchen, to visit, and started an in-depth dialogue with a team of experts led by Liu Qichuan, Secretary of the Party Committee of the School of Law of Southeast University, and Xiong Zhanglin, Dean of the School of Law of Southeast University. Zhao Huize, Deputy Secretary of the Discipline Inspection Commission of the University, Yin Ji, Director of Civil Prosecution Base, Ye Shuli, Executive Vice President of Engineering Law Research Society of Jiangsu Law Society, and more than ten teachers in the field of engineering law and criminal law attended the meeting, which was presided over by Dean Xiong Zhanglin.
At the beginning of the meeting, President Xiong Zhanglin, on behalf of the College, warmly welcomed the visit of Gulou District People's Procuratorate and stressed that this symposium is another important initiative of the College to deepen the strategy of ‘integration of prosecution and university’.
In his speech, Mr Liu Qichuan, Secretary of the College, systematically reviewed the development history and achievements of the College. He introduced that since the creation of the cross-disciplinary team in 2006, Southeast University School of Law, adhering to the concept of ‘cross-cutting, team-based, practical’ schooling, relying on the ‘discipline + base + platform + teaching materials’ four-in-one innovation model, has formed a unique characteristic It has formed a unique model of ‘Southeast Law’, and has won more than 100 provincial and ministerial honours, including the first prize of the achievements of the Ministry of Education. There are 12 provincial and ministerial-level research platforms in the College, and the faculty team has won the first prize of the Ministry of Education's achievements and many other honours, especially in the cross-disciplinary fields of engineering law, digital law and other deep deposits. Liu emphasised that the School of Law would give full play to its disciplinary advantages, build a high-level practice base with Gulou District People's Procuratorate, and strive to produce landmark results in the fields of typical case studies and training of rule of law talents.
In his speech, Prosecutor General Yan Chang traced the origins of cooperation between Gulou District People's Procuratorate and Southeast University. He pointed out that, as the central city of Nanjing, Gulou District gathers many administrative departments, universities, hospitals, social organisations and construction enterprises, and is striving to build a comprehensive and perfect modern industrial system. At the same time, Gulou District construction industry, large state-owned enterprises, private leading enterprises, construction industry, high gross output value, the field of crime prone to, more often. In the context of the integration and development of the ‘four major prosecutors’, the procuratorial authorities are faced with new types of legal problems, such as the remediation of dilapidated buildings and the safe management of underground space in urban renewal. Procurator General Yan particularly mentioned that the imbalance between the development of criminal prosecution and civil and administrative prosecution needs to be solved, and expected that the cooperation between the prosecution and the university would strengthen the theoretical support in the fields of criminal prosecution, supervision of administrative offences, public interest litigation, etc., and transform the advantages of legal research into the practical effectiveness of solving the problems of social governance.
Seminar session sparks of thought. Gulou District People's Procuratorate Deputy Procurator General Wu Hong explained the strategic significance of the cooperation between the prosecution and the university. He said that the Law School of Southeast University has strong interdisciplinary research strength, and the prosecution authorities have accumulated a wealth of practical case resources, the two sides have a broad space for co-operation in the research and judgement of new types of difficult cases and innovation of legal supervision mechanisms. Professor Yin Ji, Director of Civil Prosecution Base of Southeast University, suggested focusing on core issues such as responsibility determination of engineering safety accidents, construction of job crime prevention system, value orientation of public interest litigation, etc., and creating exemplary results through joint declaration of topics and compilation of typical casebooks. Ye Shuli, Executive Vice President of Engineering Law Research Society of Jiangsu Law Society, combined with the demand for rule of law in urban renewal, suggested that special research could be carried out around the definition of the ownership of underground space, the administrative supervision of hazardous operations and other cutting-edge issues.
Free seminar stage presents professional depth collision. Zhao Huize, Deputy Secretary of Discipline Inspection Committee and Director of Supervision Department of Southeast University, made suggestions from the perspective of discipline inspection and supervision reform. He pointed out that under the new situation of strengthening the synergistic development of party regulations and the rule of law, it is possible to explore the construction of a cross-research platform of ‘discipline inspection and supervision + engineering compliance’, and the development of a special course system for the prevention and control of integrity risks in the construction of major projects. Vice President Jiyang proposed to vertically build a research chain of accident prevention, compliance review and public welfare protection. Professors Li Chuan and Liang Yunbao of the Criminal Law Department put forward constructive opinions on the optimisation of the mechanism of pursuing responsibility for safety production accidents and the rules of transforming evidence in civil and criminal cross-case from the perspective of criminal judicial practice. Associate Professor Zhang Malin of the Engineering Law Teaching and Research Department cited specific issues such as the protection of historical buildings and property rights disputes in urban renewal, and the division of responsibility for the safety management of underground comprehensive pipeline corridors, stressing the great significance of the cooperation between the prosecution and the university in research. The participants of Gulou District People's Procuratorate highly recognised the concept of ‘theory-practice two-way empowerment’ put forward by the faculty of the Law School, and said that they would promote typical cases into the classroom, and work together to cultivate composite rule of law talents.
Dean Xiong Zhanglin in his concluding remarks again thanked Gulou District People's Procuratorate for its trust and support. He stressed that this symposium is not only a new starting point for deepening cooperation between the two sides, but also an initiative to respond to the needs of the rule of law in the new era. The law school will focus on the ‘real problems’ of the prosecutors' attention, transform the “potential energy” of academic research into the “kinetic energy” of serving the practice of the rule of law, and realise the spiral mutual promotion of theoretical research and judicial practice through diversified forms, so as to promote the cooperation between the two sides. Through multiple forms to achieve the spiral of theoretical research and judicial practice, to promote the modernisation of prosecutorial work into the ‘Southeast wisdom’. In the future, Southeast University School of Law and Gulou District People's Procuratorate will be guided by the principle of ‘handling every case with high quality and efficiency’, and will work together to build a new paradigm of cooperation between the prosecution and the university, which is based on the principle of ‘complementing each other's strengths, sharing results, and achieving a win-win situation’, so as to write a new chapter of integration and development of legal supervision and legal education in the new era. We will work together to build a new paradigm of cooperation between universities and prosecutors, and jointly write a new chapter in the integration and development of legal supervision and legal education in the new era.
(Cheng Yueh, Xing Chenxi)