Construction of Prosecutors’ Intercultural Legal Competence from the Perspective of Foreign-Related Rule of Law: An Empirical Analysis Based on a Typical Case

Abstract

Against the backdrop of advancing the foreign‑related rule‑of‑law strategy, prosecutors’ intercultural legal competence constitutes a core component for professionalizing foreign‑related prosecutorial teams, as well as an essential compound quality for resolving cross‑border legal cognitive conflicts and handling foreign‑related criminal cases in a high‑quality and standardized manner. Divergences in legal traditions, institutional norms and judicial philosophies across jurisdictions frequently give rise to legal cognitive disagreements in foreign‑related cases, which impose rigorous challenges on prosecutors’ cross‑jurisdictional identification, intercultural legal reasoning and refined discretionary capacity. Taking the typical non‑prosecution case involving a foreign student published by the Supreme People’s Procuratorate as an empirical sample, this paper sorts out typical intercultural legal conflict scenarios in foreign‑related criminal practice. It clarifies the conceptual boundary between culturally‑rooted legal cognitive bias and mistake of law in criminal dogmatics, and deconstructs four practical dimensions of prosecutors’ intercultural legal competence: intercultural legal identification capacity, cross‑linguistic judicial communication capacity, foreign‑law normative cognition capacity, and discretion capacity integrating law, reason and sentiment. Empirical analysis reveals that current training for foreign‑related prosecutorial personnel suffers structural drawbacks including ingrained single‑jurisdiction mindset, lack of specialized skill training, and insufficient mechanisms for translating competence into practice; a systematic cultivation pathway for intercultural legal competence has not yet been established. Responding to the requirements for developing foreign‑related rule‑of‑law talents in the new era, this paper constructs a practical system for building prosecutors’ intercultural legal competence tailored to prosecutorial practice from four dimensions: cognitive reshaping, tiered competence training, procedural institutional embedding, and digital empowerment. It provides theoretically‑grounded and implementable solutions to cultivate interdisciplinary foreign‑related prosecutorial talents versed in international rules and capable of cross‑jurisdictional judicial scenarios, and to improve the governance efficacy of China’s foreign‑related judiciary.