On 23 September 2016, the 2016 BOHE “Case Analysis and Criminal Defense” seminar was held at the roundtable of the East China University of Political Science. This symposium was sponsored by the Law School of East China University of Political Science and Shanghai Bohe Law Firm, the seminar focused on case studies of P2P illegal fund-raising crime, which is the current hot topic. The seminar invited various judicial offices, research institutes, and lawyers to discuss the theoretical value and practical application of the criminal cases, also referred to 37 P2P online platform criminal cases, to analyze the application of accusation in fund-raising criminal cases, moderation of the criminal law adjustment, and issues of criminal defense.
The seminar was composed of keynote speeches, topic discussions and open discussion. The program started at 13:30, Mr Dongpin Lin, director of the Shanghai Bohe Law Firm delivered the opening speech, and he raised three points: one, the significance of case analysis; two, the reason of choosing the seminar topic on P2P illegal fund-raising; three, the future of the BOHE “Case Analysis and Criminal Defense” seminar. Shanghai Bohe Law Firm will organize the “Case Analysis and Criminal Defense” seminar annually, to enhance the theoretical and practical analysis on criminal cases, and expect to turn “BOHE Case Analysis Workshop”, “BOHE Forum” and “BOHE Seminar” to three major brand events. The seminar proceeded into the topic discussion part after the speeches by East China University of Political Science Vice President Mr Kuan Shao and Shanghai Putuo District Justice Bureau Chief of Law Division Mr Hangxing Wang.

First, Professor Mang Zhu (Professor of Law at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, PhD supervisor,上Director of Institute of Constitutional and Administrative Law, Executive Director of the China Academy of Administrative Law) delivered a keynote speech on “the role of case analysis in judicial practice”, using the example of the first and second instances of judicial decisions of the Zhanxiang Qiao suing against the Ministry of Railways case in 2001, explained the method of case analysis. Professor Zhu said, the legal regulations are set once they are made, but in the subsequent application of the law, the users enter a stage of reengineering of law, which involves legal hermeneutics. Through the analysis of the current cases, we can better understand the judge’s understanding of the terms, phrases, and contents of the statute law, how it is logically constructed. It enables us to better understand the “live law” contents, and better direct our judicial practice.
Mr Wanhuai Sun (Director of Division of Scientific Research at the East China University of Political Science, Professor, PhD supervisor, managing director of China Institute of Case Studies) delivered a keynote speech on “Guidance on Judicial Theory through Case Analysis”. He first emphasized that the live of law is not logic, but experience. Cases are significant to the development of law, in another word, it has a leading role. The so called criminal law theory should be more from the practice of jurisprudence, only the research results based on this basis can feedback to the practice, and provide reference for the practice. There are existing problems in our case analysis in China, including weak case reasoning in the judgement report, deficiency in the guidance cases provided by the Supreme Court, it is easy to lose good case examples, etc., the emergence of these problems leads to the disconnection between cases and theory, which needs correction in the following analysis.
After the keynote speeches, it came to the final part of the first half of the seminar, Mr Xiangying Xie from Shanghai Bohe Law Firm introduced the “P2P online illegal fund-raising report”, which was conducted by the members of Bohe criminal law service center, through researching on the China Judgements Online website, they analyzed the status and problems of conviction of all the existing P2P criminal judgement documents available on the website.