This edited volume looks at supreme courts in China and the West. It examines the differences and similarities between the Supreme People¿s Court of Mainland China and those that follow Western models. It also offers a comparative study of a selection of supreme courts in Europe and Latin America.
The contributors argue that the Supreme Courts should give guidance to the development of the law and provide legal unity. For China, the Chinese author argues, that therefore there should be more emphasis on the procedure for reopening cases. The chapters on Western-style supreme courts argue that there should be adequate access filters; the procedure of reopening cases is considered to be problematic from the perspective of the finality of the administration of justice.
In addition, the authors discuss measures that allow supreme courts in both regions to deal with their existing caseload, to reduce this caseload, and to avoid divergences in the case law ofthe supreme court.
This volume offers ideas that will help supreme courts in both the East and the West to remove unmanageable caseloads. As a result, these courts will be better able to assist in the interpretation and clarification of the law, to provide for legal unity, and to give guidance to the development of the law.

Professor Dr. C.H. (Remco) van Rhee from Maastricht University (Netherlands) specializes in comparative civil procedure and court organization. He is a member of the board of several scholarly journals and book series, and has published widely in the fields of comparative civil procedure and the history of civil procedure. He is the chair of one of the working groups of the European Law Institute and Unidroit in charge of drafting European Rules of Civil Procedure.

Professor Dr. Yulin Fu from Peking University School of Law is a leading Chinese specialist in civil procedure, evidence, arbitration and dispute resolution. She is responsible for major publications in the field of Chinese and comparative civil procedure and has supervised the translation of important procedural works into Chinese. She served as a judge in the Wuhan Maritime Court and is an arbitrator at the China International Economic and Trade Arbitration Committee (CIETAC), the Beijing Arbitration Committee (BAC), the Wuhan Arbitration Commission and the Kazakhstan International Arbitration Center.

Chapter 1. Introduction (Van Rhee/Fu).- Chapter 2. The Supreme People's Court of Mainland China (Fu).- Chapter 3. The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom (Andrews).- Chapter 4. Supreme Courts in the Nordic Countries (Oyrehagen Sunde).- Chapter 5.The Supreme Cassation Court of the Netherlands (Verkerk/Van Rhe).- Chapter 6.The Supreme Cassation Court of Spain (De Benito).- Chapter 7. Supreme Courts in the German Speaking Countries (Domej).- Chapter 8. The Supreme Cassation Court of Chile (Bravo Hurtado).- Chapter 9. The Cour de cassation of France (Ferrand).- Chapter 10. Supreme Courts in Croatia and Slovenia (Uzelac and Gali¿).- Chapter 11. The Corte di cassazione in Italy (Silvestri).