To date, Vietnam has legislated judicial precedents in general and civil precedents in particular. This article highlights legal grounds for development and analyzes the actual status of civil precedents in Vietnam, then makes some suggestions for promoting the development of civil precedents.

After two decades of implementing the Judicial Reform Strategy under the Party’s resolutions, judicial reforms within people’s courts have recorded remarkable achievements, helping raise the position and prestige of courts. In order to successfully implement the Resolution of the 13th National Party Congress and the Resolution of the 6th plenum of the 13th Central Party Committee, it is a need to further renew the organizational apparatus and operation of people’s courts toward building the system of independent, professional, modern, equitable, civilized and incorruptible people’s courts serving the Fatherland and the people.

n relation with the right to life, the death penalty has become a topic of concern raised by many countries and one of the most controversial issues in the world. At present, numerous countries around the world have abolished the death penalty. However, it is still retained by not a few others, particularly those with a large population. Over the recent years, the world has witnessed the universal trend toward abolition of the death penalty or a moratorium on executions in practice.

As a supervision and education measure for under-18 offenders, community-based conciliation is provided for the first time in the 2015 Penal Code and the 2015 Criminal Procedure Code, marking a turning point in Vietnam’s policies on criminal handling of juvenile delinquents in compatibility with current global trends in juvenile justice. This measure is different from the other two judicial measures[1] applicable to under-18 offenders as it involves more active participation of victims and their representatives in criminal proceedings, and facilitates the use of opinions of victims during the conciliation process for handling juvenile offenders.

In the present reality, it remains difficult for law enforcement agencies to distinguish the crime of violating regulations on multilevel marketing (MLM) activities (specified in Article 217a of the 2015 Penal Code (the Code)) from the crime of appropriating property through swindling or deceiving customers (specified in Article 174 or 198 of the Code) and even from similar civil disputes, due to lack of explicit grounds. In this Article, the authors analyze and clarify the Code’s provisions on MLM-related crimes as well as their inadequacies and make some recommendations for improving those provisions with regard to the crime constituents.

By exercising their right to initiate lawsuits, shareholders of joint-stock companies become able to protect their own rights and interests against infringements of their companies and corporate managers. However, current relevant regulations still see limitations regarding the shareholder litigation right. This article analyzes such limitations and dwells upon how to better facilitate the proper exercise of this right.

In this article, the author would like to provide legal grounds for the publication of court judgments and decisions in Vietnam and analyze benefits from the mandatory publication of court judgments and decisions.

In this article, the author provides an insight view of fundamental statutory principles for adjudication of offenders aged under 18 years as per the 2015 Criminal Procedure Code and the 2015 Penal Code, with practical problems and limitations encountered by courts, and makes recommendations for better guaranteeing the juvenile justice in conformity with international legal practices.

In the last two decades, the theoretical and practical issues of court precedents as “case law” have attracted interest of many legal researchers in Vietnam. The term “precedent” first appeared in the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV)’s Political Bureau’s Resolution 48-NQ/TW dated May 24, 2005, on the Strategy to build and improve the Vietnamese legal system by 2010, with a vision toward 2020.

As recommended by the International Human Rights Committee, member states should clearly specify the time limit for temporary holding in custody or detention of persons arrested in criminal proceedings. At the same time, when exercising the right to detain or arrest people for custody or temporary detention as preventive measures, competent agencies must secure the rights of the accused and defendants in accordance with law, including the right to have access to legal aid; right to be informed; and right to obtain court rulings on whether the custody or temporary detention is lawful or unlawful.