Structural Inclusiveness and the Institutional Limits of Judicial Internationalization: A Jurisprudential Analysis of the China InternationalCommercial Court (CICC)

Abstract

 In recent years, the institutionalization of international commercial arbitration has become a prominent trend in global judicial governance. As a flagship measure for the internationalization of China's justice, the International Commercial Tribunal of China (CICC) aims to strengthen the ability to resolve cross-border disputes under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative and improve the credibility of justice. However, its operation practice shows that there is a continuous structural tension between sovereign authority and procedural autonomy. Although CICC is formally international, it has not yet formed an embedded mechanism to generate institutional trust, thus falling into a dilemma that can be called "symbolic openness". In response to this research gap, this article adopts institutional functionalism and jurisprudential analysis methods to explore the institutional boundaries of the internationalization of justice within the sovereign judicial system. Through the comparative analysis of the International Commercial Tribunal (SICC) of Singapore, the International Financial Center Court of Dubai (DIFC) and the International Commercial Chamber (CICAP) of the Court of Appeal in Paris, France, this article identifies under what conditions under which sovereign judicial institutions can achieve a balance between procedural autonomy and institutional trust. The article further put forward the two propositions of "structural inclusion" and "sovereign credibility", pointing out that through the opening up of the language system, the diversification of the access of lawyers and the internationalization of the composition of judges, the endogenous cultivation of institutional trust can be realized without weakening sovereignty. The research results show that the transition from symbolic openness to structural inclusion is a feasible path for CICC to promote the internationalization of justice, and provides a new analytical perspective for understanding the institutional reform of the sovereign judicial system.