Vietnam has set the goals of protecting and promoting the rights of the child in all domains of social life and translated relevant provisions of those conventions into its domestic laws. The 2013 Constitution contains provisions to best protect rights and interests of under-18 persons in all aspects of social life, including criminal proceedings. As the disclosure of information pertaining to privacy of under-18 persons may cause serious physical and mental consequences to them, the 2015 Criminal Procedure Code, revised in 2017, (the Code) and relevant sub-law documents all provide the keeping of secrets of under-18 persons in criminal proceedings. Below the author would like to take some insights into those provisions before making recommendations to improve the criminal procedure law and relevant laws regarding this issue.

The draft Law Revising a Number of Articles of the Intellectual Property Law has been put for public opinions and is expected to be submitted to the 15th National Assembly for consideration and comments at the 2nd session, and passage at the 3rd session. The amendments and supplementations focus on seven main groups of policies recently approved by the National Assembly, including improvement of the effectiveness of the intellectual property (IP) rights protection. This article introduces some models of specialized IP court in a number of countries in the world and makes some recommendations for Vietnam to improve the effectiveness of its IP rights protection activities.

The adversarial process in trials enshrined in the 2013 Constitution is a milestone marking changes in viewpoints and approaches during judicial reform toward an independent and transparent judicial system. This article introduces the adversarial process in trials as recognized in the Constitution and concretized in the procedural laws of Vietnam.

The article first reviews the United Nations Convention against Corruption in terms of criminalization of corruption. It then criticizes limitations and inadequacies of the 1999 Penal Code of Vietnam regarding corruption crimes in comparison with standards set by the UNCAC. 

Nguyen Thi Thuy Hang , LL.D. Hue University of Law Litigants’ procedural rights under the 2015 Civil Procedure Code (the Code) In order to enable civil litigants to best defend their lawful rights and interests before the court, the Code prescribes their general and specific procedural rights in different procedural stages.

The principle of use of language in criminal proceedings is a fundamental one of Vietnam’s criminal procedure law. Accordingly, the language used in criminal proceedings is Vietnamese, both in writing and orally.

Vietnam became an official member of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) in 1994. Since then, the Convention’s provisions have been step by step incorporated into the country’s legal framework. This article assesses the compatibility between CITES provisions and two important laws concerning wildlife conservation and protection, the 2015 Penal Code and the 2017 Law on Forestry, and puts forth some recommendations for further improvement.

As defined in the 2015 Criminal Procedure Code, exit postponement is a deterrent measure in criminal procedure that may be imposed on persons against whom denunciations or criminal case initiation proposals are made, the accused or defendants when there are sufficient valid grounds (to believe that they have committed an offense) in order to prevent them from leaving the country for a given period of time while their criminal case initiation, investigation, prosecution or trial are carried out.

Vietnam’s criminal law’s evolution landmarks include the first-ever 1985 Penal Code, 1999 Penal Code (revised in 2009) and the latest Penal Code passed in 2015 (revised in 2017). Each of these codes and its revised version was imbued with characteristics of certain criminal legislation trends in its effective period. In the initial stage of codification of Vietnam’s criminal law, international aspects were embodied in a very moderate manner. The 1985 Penal Code only recognized some international criminal law principles regarding some crimes in order to protect interests of the international community. The 1999 Penal Code went further with some revisions to guarantee Vietnam’s responsibility as a state party to a number of conventions and treaties on criminal justice. However, these two codes have not yet initiated the internationalization trend of Vietnam’s criminal law. Until the 2009 Code revising the 1999 Penal Code and the 2015 Penal Code (revised in 2017), such trends as modernization, benevolence, international integration, judicial reform and respect for human rights are embraced. So, for what reasons Vietnam’s criminal law has been influenced by international criminal law and more and more clearly leaned toward consistency with international criminal law?

This paper outlines the remarkable evolution of juvenile justice in Vietnam. It discusses the extent to which Vietnamese juvenile justice and related laws and policies have been shaped by identifiable ideologies and models of intervention. Moreover, the legal framework governing juvenile justice, mainly the 2016 Law on Children, the 2015 Penal Code, the 2015 Criminal Procedure Code and the 2010 Law on Execution of Criminal Judgments, is introduced to show the complex and scattered state of relevant legislation. The paper offers a short analysis of actors who perform the juvenile justice role or function and reveals a system without specialization or clear separation from the justice system for adult offenders. In addition to identifying emerging characteristics of the system, the author compares these with some typical juvenile justice models around the world, namely the welfare model, the justice model and the restorative model, and concludes that the Vietnamese model is a hybrid mixture of these three ones. Finally, the author makes some recommendations on shaping the juvenile justice system of Vietnam in conformity with international standards in order to meet access-to-justice needs of Vietnamese juvenile offenders.