The petitioning system in modern China is separated from the legal system. Because courts can only deal with a certain number of cases involving legal rights, the petitioning system can take over some burden from the court to deal with issues not involving legal rights. Therefore, theoretically, the petitioning system supplements the legal system and the rule of law as an alternative channel to bring justice to people. In the U.S., because legal solution is the final solution, so when there is no legal problem, people intend to turn it into a legal problem to get some remedies from the court. Conversely, in China, because the court oftentimes cannot provide adequate remedy and because people do not have the revenue to lobby the Congress to change the law like in the U.S., people turn legal problems into petitioning problems. Although the petitioning system seems to complement the legal system with its flexibility and accessibility, unrestrained and unchecked petitions will undermine the rule of law because it gives unlimited opportunities to people to obsessively challenge the authority of the court and the authority of local officials without legal basis and to continuously harass the central superiors. Further, without a set of rules and guidance, the outcomes of petitioning rely too much on individual superior officials’ discretion and are extremely random and unpredictable, which is contrary to the principles of the rule of law.
