The revelation that the leadership of the Communist Party decided to restore the power of its Politics and Legal Affairs Commission 22 years ago, in the wake of the June 4 crackdown, has triggered debate among lawyers, academics and others about the party's role in judicial affairs.
They have generally welcomed a suggestion by Qiao Shi, a party moderate who was chairman of the National People's Congress between 1993 and 1998 and the party official in charge of legal affairs between 1985 and 1992, that the commission's power to intervene in court cases be reduced and limited.
In a book published last week - Qiao Shi on Democracy and Rule of Law - Qiao revealed the leadership decided to restore the commission's status in early 1990, two years after it had been downgraded to a leading group. The U-turn was an effort to accommodate social changes wrought by the June 4 military crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Beijing's Tiananmen Square a year earlier, according to Qiao.
The commission, a powerful body under the party's Central Committee, oversees all the mainland's law-enforcement authorities, including the police, internal security personnel, prosecutors and courts.
Many believe that there is no rule of law on the mainland because the judiciary is dictated by the commission and its local offshoots.
Professor He Weifang, from Peking University's law school, said: 'The party commissions should be scrapped, otherwise there's no point talking about the rule of law in the country.'
