Slaying of Beijing Judge Prompts Horror in China’s Embattled Legal Community: by Te-Ping Chen in the Wall St Journal, Feb 29, 2016

The case of a Beijing judge gunned down late last week — the latest in a slew of physical attacks against the profession — has triggered horror and introspection among China’s legal community, which is already facing problems of morale.
According to the Supreme People’s Court’s verified Weibo account, Ma Caiyun, 38, was shot and killed on Friday by two attackers. One of the attackers, the court said, was an individual whose post-divorce property settlement case had previously been heard by Ms. Ma. The duo killed themselves after the attack on Ms. Ma, the court said.
According to the Beijing police, the perpetrators also attacked several others, including a man married to one of the attackers’ ex-wives. The man died in the assault, police said, adding that the gun used in the attack was homemade.
China’s judges have faced violent assaults before, including physical beatings, knifings and more. Last September, a 43-year-old man involved in a Hubei labor dispute, unhappy with the verdict, stabbed four judges.
On social media, numerous judges and lawyers mourned and shared news of Ms. Ma’s death. While such postings were at first the subject of assiduous deletions by censors, on Sunday, the country’s highest court publicly confirmed her death.
One Shenzhen-based lawyer, Mei Chunlai, posting on WeChat about Ms. Ma’s case, mourned the judge’s death and noted that it coincided with an exodus of judges leaving the profession. “With large numbers of talented judges leaving their posts, if there’s no one left to persevere for social justice, it will affect not only the regime’s stability, but also the legal rights and benefits of everyone,” he wrote.
Other professions in China have similarly come under physical attack, including doctors, who have faced assaults from dissatisfied patients and their family members seeking retribution.
“In China, of the three most respected professions in the West, two have already been ruined,” another lawyer wrote in a post that circulated on WeChat. “In a normal society, three kinds of people can’t be toppled: judges, lawyers and doctors. One protects society’s bottom line, the other guards social justice, the other protects life. In China, judges and doctors have already become high-risk professions.”
Among those judges in China who have quit in recent years, some have done so in a highly public fashion, posting open resignation letters critiquing low levels of pay and heavy caseloads. In one recent instance, a Hunan judge’s letter of resignation that cited feeling overwhelmed with work to the point of being unable to care for his son or parents went viral online last week.
Despite Chinese President Xi Jinping’s repeated emphasis on establishing “rule of law,” the courts remain weak, experts say, with cases subject to pervasive influence from local officials, adding to pressures on the job.
Ms. Ma loved writing poetry, drawing and flowers, some of which she cared for at the court, according to an account posted by the Supreme People’s Court that cited her colleagues. “Ma Caiyun reflected perseverance, honesty and dedication to her work, and deserves to be studied by every single judge,” Zhang Baowu, vice-head of the court where Ms. Ma served in Changping, northwest Beijing, the account ran.
Susan Finder, visiting lecturer at Peking University School of Transnational Law, suggested that Ms. Ma’s death would have other reverberations as well, given past cases of violence. “I think there’s a feeling that ‘there but for the grace of God go I,’” she said, “because you never know which of your cases will cause a litigant to fly off the handle.” http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2016/02/29/slaying-of-beijing-judge-prompts-horror-in-chinas-embattled-legal-community/