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of presenting their opinions to the Party. The opportunity was too much for judicial workers to pass up, and the speeches which followed were often extremely vitriolic. Almost every aspect of existing judicial practice came under attack, particularly the role played by the Party. The editor of the Association's journal, Zhengfa yanjiu, demanded that high Communist cadres “get down out of their sedan chairs". Some of the more important demands presented, as reported by the New China News Agency on May 29, 1957, included: 1) reform of law schools and the broadening of legal education to include such subjects as international law, which had been neglected under the Communists; 2) relaxation of the dictatorship and stress on the protection of democratic privileges; 3) immediate codification of the laws which were said in many fields to be entirely lacking or so vague they could not be used as a basis for sound legal judgments; 4) elimination of mass movements which usurped the function of the courts; 5) assertion of judicial independence and elimination of Party interference in judicial matters. What was even more surprising was that among the strongest critics were members of the Party, including Jia Qian, chief judge of one of the two criminal divisions of the Supreme Court. In spite of the highly emotional language used in expressing these demands, there was little questioning of the basic leadership role of the Party in society at large. Yet, when the counterattack came in the context of the well-known Anti-Rightist Movement two weeks later, it soon became clear that the Party was going to interpret these demands in that light. Extensive purges followed. Many leading judicial figures were declared “rightists” and relieved of their posts and some were sent to the countryside for reform through labour.
The attack on the "rightists" continued throughout the rest of the year and on into the spring of 1958. The arguments that filled the law journals during these months indicated a complete reversal of the former trend toward an independent judicial system and its attendant professionalism. The anti-rightist arguments of this period are well represented in a January 19, 1958 radio speech of Wu Defeng, Vice-President of the Chinese Political Science and Law Association. Wu presented a series of statements which he claimed represented the views of the "rightists" along with his replies: