Vietnamese jurisprudence: informing court reform

In April 2002 the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) finalised its Resolution of the Political Bureau on Forthcoming Principal Judiciary Tasks (‘Resolution 8’), a policy paper identifying priorities for Vietnamese legal reform. Subsequently, the Vietnamese Party–state issued laws to reform the courts, responding specifically to the needs identified in Resolution 8.1 The question emerging from this policy paper and the subsequent reforms is whether, or to what extent, this latest round of court reforms reflects contemporary Vietnamese theorising on the role and function of law and the courts. At the heart of this question hovers a larger question. In its transition from a planned economy to a socialist-oriented market economy, the Vietnamese Party– state appears relatively certain about the nature of mixed market economy it envisions and seeks. While not abandoning the role of the state, the Vietnamese Party–state seeks to enable a mixed market–public sector economy (Van Arkadie and Mallon 2003). This requires a radical reduction in the role of the state in terms of market planning, production and employment and the take-up of production and employment by the private sector (Fforde and Vylder 1996; Beresford 1997). It is not clear that the same vision exists with regard to the shape and form of the Vietnamese legal system, which is apparently radically changing to accommodate the changing economic conditions. While the economic base changes, it is suggested that the Party–state has not yet articulated an equivalently detailed vision for the form or shape of the transitional legal system. This chapter aims to explore whether a role for the courts has been articulated and whether the reforms reflect this. This chapter does not consider the question of whether transitional legal systems will inevitably emerge as systems committed to the Anglo-European US liberal legal