'Family ties out of the courtroom'

BEIJING - Judges who have a spouse or offspring working as a lawyer in the same judicial area as theirs must declare a conflict of interest and one of them must get out of town under a new regulation issued by the top court.

The regulation on "recusal" - the technical word for such judicial conflicts of interest - took effect on Feb 10.

The rules are aimed at ensuring there is an appropriate distance between judges and lawyers and note that "in certain cases, lawyers and judges from the same families take advantage of their personal relations to make illegal profits", the Supreme People's Court (SPC) said in a statement released late on Wednesday.