Several Rules Regarding Case Numbers Used by People's Courts

Source：http://www.court.gov.cn/fabu-xiangqing-14970.html

Supreme People's Court Notification on the Release of the "Several Rules on the People's Courts' Case Numbering" and Associated Standards

Law (2015) No. 137

To all operational units of this court; all high courts of provinces, autonomous regions, and directly governed municipalities; military courts of the People's Liberation Army, branch courts of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region Construction and Production Corps:

The 1645th meeting of the adjudication committee of the Supreme People's Court has passed the "Several Rules Regarding Case Numbers Used By People's Courts" (hereinafter the rules) and accompanying standards, are hereby released.

Promptly report circumstances and issues discovered in implementation to the Supreme People's Court.

Contact: Office of the Research and Statistics Office of the Supreme People's Court Work

Contact Methods: 010-67557245 (phone) 67557208 (fax)

5/13/2015

Several Rules Regarding Case Numbers Used by People's Courts

These rules are made in order to unify the formation, usage and management of the People’s Courts’ case numbers in accordance with the relevant laws, administrative regulations, judicial interpretations, regulative documents of the Supreme People’s Court, and current practices.

I. General Provisions

Article 1: Article 1 “Case number(s)” referred to in these rules are brief symbols used to identify the category and order of the cases decided by courts at each level in China's judicial hierarchy, formed from Chinese characters, Arabic numerals and parentheses.

Article 2: The basic elements of a case number are: Year of Acceptance, Court Code, Category Code, and Case Number.

"Year of Acceptance" means the calendar year when a case is accepted, and is indicated by Arabic numerals.

"Court Code" means the brief symbol of the court hearing a case and is indicated by Chinese characters and Arabic numerals.

"Category Code" means the abbreviation of the category of a case, indicated by Chinese characters.

"Case Number" is the sequential number assigned in accordance with the date when a case was accepted by the court and is indicated by Arabic numerals.

Article 3: The arrangement of the basic elements shall be: “(“+year of acceptance+”)” + court code + Category code + case number + “number”.

The case number for each case shall be unique.

II. Court Codes

Article 4: The Court code for the Supreme People’s Court is “SPC” [最高法].

The court code of the high court of each province, autonomous region and municipality directly under the Central Government is identical to the abbreviation of the province, autonomous region or municipalities where it is located, except for those courts provided for in the third clause.

The Court codes for the High People’s Court of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Military Courts of the People's Liberation Army, and the Branch Court of the High People’s Court of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region Production and Construction Corps are Inner [内], Military [军], and Corps [兵] respectively.

Article 5: The Court codes of intermediate courts and basic level courts are formed by the codes of the high court above them and their respective numerical codes.

The numerical codes of intermediate and basic level courts shall be respectively indicated by either two or four Arabic numerals, and comply with the following rules:

(1) The intermediate courts established according to prefecture-level areas, e.g. prefecture-level municipalities, regions, autonomous prefectures and leagues; and basic level courts established according to county-level areas, e.g. counties, autonomous counties, county-level cities, banners, autonomous banners, municipal districts, forestry districts and special districts, shall be assigned numeral codes identical to the middle two numbers or the last four numbers of the code of their corresponding administrative area (i.e. the tiered code consisting of 3 tiers and 6 numbers);

(2) The intermediate courts under the municipalities directly under the Central Government, the Military Court of the People's Liberation Army, and the Branch Court of the High People’s Court of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in the Production and Construction Corps shall be assigned numeral codes from 01 to 20.

(3) The specialized intermediate courts for railways, the admiralty, intellectual property, oil fields, forestry, and agricultural cultivation under the high courts of provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the Central Government; the intermediate courts with jurisdictions that cross administrative borders and that are governed by high courts of provinces and autonomous regions; and the intermediate courts established for courts of the county level administrative areas directly led by provinces (autonomous regions) shall be assigned numeral codes 71, 72, 73, 74, 75-80, 81-85, 87-95 and 96-99.

(4) The basic level courts under the Military Court of the People's Liberation Army and under the Branch Court of High People’s Court of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in the Production and Construction Corps, and the basic level courts for railways, oil fields, forestry, and agricultural cultivation that are under specialized intermediate courts (within the jurisdiction of the same high court) for railways, oil fields, forestry, and agricultural cultivation shall be assigned a four digit numerical code with the first two digits being identical to the first two numbers of their respective intermediate courts, and the last two digits ranging from 01 to 40.

(5) If a prefecture-level municipality does not have county-level administrative areas under it, the basic level courts under its intermediate court shall be assigned four digit numerical codes whose first two digits will be identical to the intermediate court, and the last two digits will range from 71 to 80.

(6) For those basic level railway courts that are located within the jurisdiction of the same high court and do not have an intermediate railway court above them, their four digit numerical codes shall begin with the numbers '86,' and the last two digits of the code will range from 01 to 20.

(7) The basic level forestry and agricultural cultivation courts for whom the intermediate courts above them are not forestry or agricultural cultivation courts, and the basic level courts established specially for development zones, new areas, parks, reservoir areas and mining areas shall be assigned a four digit numerical code whose first two digits are identical to the intermediate court above them, and the last two digits will range from 91 to 99.

The intermediate and basic level courts mentioned in No. 2-7 of the clauses above, when under the same high court or intermediate court, shall receive a digit as required by certain factors including the order of establishment and the organizational system of the relevant courts.

Article 6: The unified management of personnel, funds and property is the standard for identifying which province, autonomous region or municipality’s high court is above an intermediate or basic level court.

“The intermediate court above ” as mentioned in No.7, second clause of Article 5 means the intermediate court that principally hears the relevant basic level court’s appellate cases.

III. Category codes

Article 7: In identifying the Category code of a case, the factors to be considered are the characters of the relevant legal issues and the procedure applied to the case.

The Category code shall be brief and shall appropriately reflect the core characteristic of the category, using no more than three Chinese characters.

The Category code for each case category shall be unique.

Article 8: When a case is consolidated or uses more than one kind of procedure is used, the category code shall be determined by the issue that must be decided first and the procedure applied to that issue.

IV. Case numbers

Article 9: The numbers of the cases shall be counted separately for the cases heard by different courts, or cases heard by the same court but belonging to different categories.

Article 10: The numbers for cases under the same Category code shall be numbered according to the order of acceptance by presiding courts within the same calendar year with sequential natural numbers, except as provided in the next clause.

The case number for criminal cases under review shall consist of a fixed length of eight numbers, which shall be formed randomly by the court hearing the review case. Sequential numbering is not allowed.

V. Management of Case Numbers

Article 11: The basic elements, specifications and rules for the formation of case numbers shall be uniformly formulated by the Supreme People’s Court.

Article 12: Article 12 The Court codes for the High People’s Courts of the provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the Central Government, the Military Court of the People's Liberation Army, and the Branch Court of High People’s Court of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region Production and Construction Corps, and of the intermediate courts and basic level court below them shall be announced regularly and uniformly by the Supreme People’s Court.

Article 13: When administrative areas have changed but their corresponding intermediate and basic level courts have not been adjusted accordingly, the Court codes shall be formed in compliance with the code of the administrative area before the change occurred.

When changes in the circumstances specified in the second clause of Article 5 result in changes to the intermediate or basic level courts, the codes of courts shall be formed according to the changed circumstances and in compliance of the rules in Article 5.

Article 14: The Supreme People’s Court shall make separate rules for the categories of cases and their codes in detail.

Article 15: When the formulation, modification or abolishment of laws or administrative regulations cause changes in the categorization of cases, the Supreme People’s Court shall modify the categories of cases and the codes assigned to them in a timely manner.

When the Supreme People’s Court’s formulation, modification or abolishment of judicial interpretations or regulative documents might cause changes in the categorization of cases, the categories of cases and the codes assigned to them shall be adjusted accordingly.

Article 16: The department responsible for accepting cases or similar duties in each court shall be responsible for the specific formation of case numbers for each case.

VI. Supplementary Provisions

Article 17: Article 17 These rules shall enter into force on January 1st, 2016.

These rules shall preempt the previous regulations issued by the Supreme People’s Court concerning case numbers that are inconsistent with these rules.

For the cases that have been assigned case numbers before these rules come into force and have not been finished by the effective date, their case numbers are not changed by these rules.

Appendix 1:People's Courts' Standards for Case Categories and their Codes

Appendix 2:Chart of Court Codes from all Levels

Appendix 3:《人民法院案件收、立案信息登记表》

Appendix 1:

People's Courts' Standards for Case Categories and their Codes

Appendix 2:Chart of Court Codes from all Levels

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[Explanation]：

(1) the local courts at various levels in this table are divided into 7 types, respectively represented by 1-7 where:

"1" means high, intermediate and basic level courts established according to administrative regions;

"2" means the intermediate courts of directly controlled municipalities and intermediate courts of provinces and autonomous regions that cross administrative regions.

"3" means specialized intermediate and basic-level courts railway, maritime, intellectual property rights, forestry, oil, agriculture and rural reclamation;

"4" means basic-level courts specially established for areas such as development zones,new districts, park areas, reservoir areas and mines that are not administrative regions;

“5”表示为省（自治区）直辖县级行政区划人民法院对应设立的中院；

“6”表示为未设县级行政区划的地级市中级法院对应设立的基层法院；

“7”表示中国人民解放军军事法院、新疆维吾尔自治区高级人民法院生产建设兵团分院及所辖中级、基层法院。

（二）虽然《规定》第六条规定：确定中级、基层法院的所属各省、自治区、直辖市高院，以人、财、物统一管理为标准。但此项改革尚未落实，故上表仅作为法院代字标准使用，不作为将来确定人、财、物统一管理的依据。

（三）上表所列法院名称系按照《最高人民法院关于地方各级人民法院和专门人民法院印章管理的规定》（法发[2002]10号）确定。

（四）此次发布的全国法院代字表是在各高院呈报（截至2015年4月9日）的基础上编定，行政区划代码参考中华人民共和国民政部编制《中华人民共和国乡镇行政区划简册（2015）》以及民政部官网2015年5月发布的《2015年3月中华人民共和国县以上行政区划代码》。

（五）行政区划变更而法院尚未相应调整的，2016年1月1日起法院进行相应调整后，相关法院应按《规定》重新编制法院代字。

（六）法院代字与办理案件的法院名称一一对应，变更后也不再应用于其他法院。