While organizing law-themed lectures and forums on a regular basis, Party organizations should also hold study sessions pertaining to a specific field before reaching a major decision and keep a record of learners' attendance and study progress.
The document also highlights microblogs, WeChat and other social-networking services as learning platforms, encouraging organizers to arrange learners to attend court hearings.
Law will become a compulsory training subject for officials in Party schools, governance academies and other training institutions.
ABIDING BY LAW
In addition to study, the document urges Party and government groups to verify the legality of major decisions, and establish a mechanism to backtrack liabilities and punish officials for illegal decision-making, abuse of official power and dereliction of duty that lead to severe consequences.
The document highlights major decision-making in the law enforcement field, stressing that such decisions must be evaluated and approved in accordance with the law first, and those that haven't gone through this process are invalid.
Ma Qingyu said negligence of law in decision-making still exists. In some localities vain construction projects to beautify buildings fail to take into consideration cost-effectiveness or whether it's a good distribution of resources, which leads to waste of public resources.
Legal verification and other procedures are quite important, said Ma.
The document stipulates that governments at all levels should all employ legal consultants to provide legal opinions during major decision-making. Party and government organs as well as state-owned enterprises should all have their own lawyers.
At present, many local governments have legal consultants, even at the county level, Ma said. It has been a common practice for a while, but with the document, the practice of governments seeking advice from legal consultants will be a unified requirement from the central authorities.
The document also stresses transparency, urging government and Party organs to inform the public of their duty and jurisdictions as well as the legal basis, progress and results for official decisions and projects.
In March 2015, China issued rules to name and shame officials who interfere in judicial cases, and judicial personnel are obliged to keep detailed records should the interference occur, no matter who is involved.
According to the rules, officials will have committed violations if they intercede for litigants, ask personnel handling cases to meet with the litigants or their defenders privately, or overstep their authority to make tendentious suggestions or directions on handling of cases by means of hearing reports, holding meetings or issuing circulars.
