On 30 May 2026, the Chief Justice of the Supreme People’s Court issued Circular No. 12/2026/TT-TANDTC on courtroom and hearing-room rules of conduct and the audio and video recording of court proceedings and hearings, taking effect on 1 August 2026. Under the provisions as issued, participants in and attendees at court proceedings are in principle prohibited from bringing into the courtroom mobile phones, tablet computers, laptop computers, smartwatches, and any device capable of collecting, processing, storing, transmitting, or exchanging digital data, unless permitted by the judge presiding over the trial or chairing the hearing.
If this provision were read purely as a measure for managing order in the courtroom, one might regard it as nothing more than a precaution against unauthorised recording, a means of limiting noise, and a way of ensuring the concentration of those participating in the proceedings. However, once the structure of the rule is unpacked, placed within the hierarchy of the legal system, and tested against the fundamental principles governing the limits of public power, it becomes clear that the problem does not lie in the creation of an ordinary rule of conduct. The problem lies in the fact that a piece of subordinate legislation has converted a lawful working tool into something that is presumptively prohibited, while simultaneously turning the right to use that tool into an exception dependent on the will of the person conducting the hearing.
These arbitrarily framed regulatory rules are not merely an inconvenience to lawyers, nor are they simply a debate about whether case files should exist on paper or in digital form on a laptop. The real issue is that the highest adjudicative body has used its power to prescribe internal rules in order to expand the scope of prohibition beyond what statute provides, to reverse the relationship between right and exception, and to create an uncriteria-bound discretionary power over the very conditions for exercising the right of defence and the right to protect the legitimate interests of a party.
1. A prohibition is legitimate only when the thing prohibited carries within itself the very risk the prohibition seeks to eliminate
A prohibition does not become lawful merely because the authority that issues it attaches to it a seemingly legitimate objective. In a rule-of-law order, there must exist, between the thing prohibited, the risk to be guarded against, the interest to be protected, and the degree of interference, a chain of causal relationships that can be explained and verified.
The law prohibits bringing weapons, explosives, flammable substances, poisons, or items banned from circulation into court proceedings because the risk is inherent in the very presence of those objects. A firearm brought into the adjudicative space, even before it is used, already creates a direct risk to the life, health, and safety of those present. Explosives, poisons, and offensive weapons share the same character, because the capacity to cause harm does not arise only after a complex process of use but exists from the moment those items are brought into the place of adjudication.
In such cases, a prohibition on carrying is a measure that corresponds to the inherently dangerous nature of the object, because the interest that the law seeks to protect cannot be adequately guaranteed if intervention waits until a dangerous item is actually used.
Mobile phones and computers do not belong to that risk structure. They are not items banned from circulation, they are not inherently dangerous, and they cause no harm merely by sitting on a lawyer’s desk. If a risk exists, it arises only from specific acts of use—for example, producing sound that disrupts proceedings, recording audio or video in violation of the rules, livestreaming, communicating without authorisation with other persons, or disclosing information that requires protection.
This distinction is decisive, because when the risk lies in the manner of use, the subject-matter of the rule must be the act of misuse, not the device itself. A prohibition on unauthorised recording correctly identifies the conduct. A requirement to set a phone to silent mode is a measure that directly protects order. A prohibition on livestreaming court proceedings is a restriction that can be linked to an identifiable interest requiring protection. But a blanket prohibition on all devices merely because they are inferred to be “capable of being used for a prohibited act” substitutes a general administrative presumption for proper legal analysis.
If that logic were accepted, any tool could become the subject of a prohibition, because there is no object that cannot conceivably be misused. Paper files may contain classified documents; a pen may be used to record content that is not to be published; spectacles may incorporate a camera; an attendee may memorise and recount the course of proceedings. Yet the law cannot eliminate every tool capable of being misused, because such an order would no longer be law regulating conduct but would become an unlimited preventive power premised on suspicion of every individual.
The fundamental error in the provision is not merely that it prohibits too broadly; it is that it identifies the wrong subject-matter for prohibition. Rather than identifying the specific conduct that causes harm, the Circular has treated the device capable of facilitating that conduct as the source of danger itself. That approach to rule-making erases the distinction between lawful and unlawful use, and treats every person as a subject to be pre-emptively restrained before any violation has been committed.
2. Moving from “may not use” to “may not bring in” is the creation of a new legal rule
Between a prohibition on using a phone at a particular moment and a prohibition on bringing a phone or laptop into the courtroom, there is a very significant legal gap.
A prohibition on use regulates conduct during the course of proceedings. A party to litigation may still carry lawful property but must ensure that property is not used in a manner that creates noise, disrupts the hearing, or collects or transmits information in violation of the rules. This limitation acts precisely on conduct capable of causing harm and exists only within the necessary scope.
A prohibition on bringing in, by contrast, is a form of prior restraint applied before any violation has occurred, irrespective of the purpose of the person carrying the device, without requiring any specific risk to exist, and eliminating even entirely lawful forms of use. A laptop containing only case-file documents, a tablet with its network connection disabled, or a phone that has been switched off all fall under the same prohibition alike.
For this reason, “may not bring in” cannot be treated as a detailed implementation of “may not use.” Detailed implementing provisions may only develop content that already exists in statute—they may clarify the timing, manner, responsibility, or procedure for giving effect to a rule, but they may not change the subject-matter of the rule, expand the scope of a restriction, or create an additional legal condition that did not previously exist.
Where statute limits only a particular manner of use and a circular converts that into a prohibition on the presence of the device itself, the subordinate instrument has moved beyond the bounds of implementation. It has made a new policy choice: making prohibition the rule, making the judge’s permission the exception, and placing the party to litigation under an obligation to demonstrate that they deserve to use a lawful tool.
The Law on the Promulgation of Normative Legal Documents 2025 establishes requirements of constitutionality, legality, consistency within the legal system, and the issuing of instruments within the proper scope of authority. The fact that a circular also has normative character does not grant it the standing to occupy the same level as statute; on the contrary, precisely because a circular is capable of imposing binding rules on a large number of people, its content must be all the more strictly constrained by instruments of higher legal force.
If it were accepted that a body empowered to prescribe internal rules may of its own accord add any prohibition it considers necessary, the concept of regulatory authority would lose all limits. Statute would then no longer determine the scope of rights and obligations; it would merely be the starting point from which an implementing body continues to write policy by way of circulars. This reversal undermines the very principle of legal hierarchy in the structure of authority of a progressive rule-of-law state, because a lower-ranking instrument, while not openly repudiating statute, alters statute’s practical effect by adding conditions that the legislature never imposed.
3. The phrase “unless permitted by the judge” does not soften the provision; it converts a right into a privilege
One might argue that the prohibition is not absolute because the judge may still permit a lawyer or party to bring a device into the courtroom. However, it is precisely this exception that reveals the most profound reversal in the structure of rights.
In a rule-of-law order, an individual may carry out lawful activities and is restricted only when there is a statutory basis for restriction. The burden of demonstrating the necessity of a restriction lies with the public authority. But under the structure of the Circular, a party to litigation is presumptively prohibited from bringing a device, and the ability to use a working tool becomes an exception for which they must seek permission.
This is not simply a procedural change. It changes the legal status of the subject. A lawyer is no longer recognised as someone who has an inherent right to choose appropriate working tools within the limits of the law, but is placed in the position of a supplicant seeking the approval of the very person who is conducting and adjudicating the case.
The Circular sets out no criteria by which to govern the decision to grant or refuse permission. There is no standard relating to the size of the file, the nature of the case, the purpose of use, the method of securing data, the timing of the request, or any obligation to give reasons for a refusal. The concept of “good reason” therefore does not create a predictable legal standard; it merely opens up a zone of discretion.
In those conditions, the same request to use a laptop to access case files may be granted at one trial and refused at another. The exercise of the right of defence no longer depends on a uniform rule but on the personal views, management habits, or degree of openness of the individual judge.
A decision that affects the conditions for exercising procedural rights, yet lacks criteria, does not require reasons to be given, and has no effective control mechanism, is not a purely administrative act. It is a discretionary power created by subordinate legislation, exercised by the very person who simultaneously holds the authority to decide the case.
4. The reality of case files running to tens of thousands of folios shows that the provision is not merely unreasonable but actively destroys the material conditions for adversarial proceedings
The error of the provision becomes especially stark when it is applied to complex cases in which the file may comprise 20,000 to 40,000 folios, including witness statements, minutes, expert conclusions, electronic data, statistical tables, technical documents, and a large number of cross-referenced exhibits.
Suppose a case involves ten lawyers. Each lawyer cannot bring only a few dozen pages that they consider important, because adversarial proceedings do not follow a fully predictable script. A statement made during the hearing may contradict the record of an interrogation at folio 8,000; a figure in the indictment may need to be checked against a data table in another annex; a submission by the representative of the Procuracy may require the lawyer to look up immediately a legal provision or a piece of evidence that has been digitised.
If laptops must be left outside the courtroom, lawyers have only two options. Either they do not have access to the full range of documents they need and must accept a diminished capacity to mount a challenge; or they must print a volume of documents large enough to deal with developments that cannot be predicted in advance.
If each lawyer prints approximately 10,000 pages, ten lawyers will bring into the courtroom approximately 100,000 pages of paper. At that volume, the means of transport is no longer a document bag but must be a trolley, archive boxes, or file shelves. The aisles of the courtroom will be narrowed, the lawyers’ seats will be surrounded by stacks of paper, finding a particular folio will require manual searching, and the risk of misfiling, losing, or disordering documents increases in direct proportion to the volume of material brought in.
A laptop weighing under two kilograms can hold all of that material, allowing keyword searches, hyperlinked annotations, comparison of multiple documents, and retrieval of a single folio within seconds. When that device is excluded from the courtroom, the same volume of information must be reproduced in hundreds of kilograms of paper, dozens of trolleys, and a volume of mechanical operations that has no legal value whatsoever.
What is particularly striking is that this consequence directly negates the objectives that the prohibition might be invoked to serve. If the objective is to maintain order, dozens of trolleys and hundreds of bundles of documents clearly cause more disruption to the adjudicative space than laptops placed silently on a desk. If the objective is security, open paper files moving through multiple hands and liable to be picked up inadvertently are not necessarily safer than encrypted, access-controlled digital data. If the objective is to ensure the continuity of proceedings, manually searching through tens of thousands of pages of documents will certainly interrupt adversarial proceedings more than electronic retrieval.
It is also necessary to recognise that the costs of the ban are not borne by lawyers alone. Printing tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of pages generates costs for paper, ink, photocopying, transport, storage, and preservation; prolongs the duration of proceedings; increases the risk of document confusion; and simultaneously creates a waste that runs entirely counter to the policy of digitising judicial work.
A provision that creates more physical disorder than the thing it seeks to prevent, reduces the efficiency of evidence retrieval, increases social costs, and turns the courtroom into an unmanageable archive cannot be defended on the ground that it aims to preserve order. When the chosen means undermines the very objective declared, the provision fails not only the requirement of proportionality but also the minimum requirement of suitability.
5. The laptop has become a component of the capacity to mount a defence, not merely a convenient accessory
The right of defence cannot be reduced to the right to be present at a hearing and to speak when the presiding judge grants the floor. The Code of Criminal Procedure confers on defence counsel the right to study the case file, to gather and adduce evidence, to participate in examination, to present submissions, and to carry out the activities necessary to protect the accused.
Those rights have real substance only if the lawyer is capable of accessing, organising, and using information effectively at the moment of adversarial exchange. In large-scale cases, the ability to search by keyword, to cross-reference statements with folios, to compare data tables, to view electronic evidence, and to update arguments as proceedings develop is no longer a supplementary convenience; it is a component of the capacity to exercise the right of defence.
When the laptop is excluded from the courtroom, the lawyer does not lose the right of defence in name, but their practical ability to exercise that right is significantly diminished. This is a form of rights restriction that is often harder to identify than a direct prohibition: the law continues to declare that the right is guaranteed, while the material conditions necessary for the right to function are curtailed.
The asymmetry becomes even clearer when one notes that the bench, the court clerk, and the procurator may use computers, databases, and the technical facilities of state agencies, while defence counsel may use equivalent tools only with the judge’s permission. The body that holds adjudicative power thus simultaneously controls the means that the defence is permitted to use in order to challenge the evidence and arguments being presented before it.
Equality in proceedings does not require every actor to occupy an identical position, but it does require each party to have a genuine and reasonable opportunity to present their case without being placed at a significant disadvantage relative to the opposing side. A provision that diminishes the lawyer’s capacity to process the case file while imposing no corresponding restriction on public-authority actors cannot therefore be assessed merely as a matter of device management; it directly affects the balance of the adversarial process.
6. The prohibition does not survive proportionality review
Even setting aside the question of authority and assuming that the issuing body could impose restrictions on electronic devices, the measure would still need to be tested at three levels: whether it is capable of achieving its objective; whether a less restrictive alternative exists that would achieve an equivalent result; and whether the benefit gained is sufficient to justify the harm caused to rights and to the conduct of proceedings.
At the first level, banning laptops is not a suitable measure for preventing audio or video recording or data transmission, because those risks can be addressed directly by prohibiting the corresponding acts. The ban also eliminates entirely lawful uses such as accessing the file, taking notes, and presenting evidence.
At the second level, a number of less restrictive measures exist: requiring devices to be in silent mode; prohibiting calls and communication during the hearing; prohibiting audio or video recording or livestreaming without authorisation; controlling network connectivity in specific, justified circumstances; and dealing directly with those who violate the rules rather than presumptively restraining everyone.
At the third level, the managerial benefit the ban produces is very difficult to identify, while the harm to the capacity for defence, the duration of proceedings, the cost of printing, the organisation of the courtroom, and the progress of judicial digitisation is manifest. A measure that yields only convenience for the managing authority while creating a burden far greater on the exercise of rights cannot be regarded as proportionate.
Article 14(2) of the Constitution subjects any restriction on human rights and civil rights to the requirement that it be prescribed by statute and only in cases where it is necessary for constitutionally specified purposes. That principle does not permit a sub-statutory instrument to create a substantive restriction on the conditions for practising law, the right to use property, and the capacity to exercise the right of defence, merely by invoking general references to security, order, or the solemnity of proceedings.
7. The solemnity of the judiciary does not equate to the power of the presiding officer to impose
An outdated administrative mindset often equates solemnity with the degree of submission it commands, supposing that more prohibitions, fewer tools, and greater concentrations of decision-making authority in the presiding officer make for a more dignified hearing. However, the solemnity of the judiciary is not formed from the inconveniences that the parties must endure; it is formed from the independence of the adjudicator, the fairness of the procedure, the quality of adversarial exchange, the capacity to hear and withstand challenge, and the persuasiveness of the judgment.
A hearing in which lawyers are able to retrieve evidence accurately, respond immediately to submissions, and identify contradictions in the file does not diminish the authority of the Court. On the contrary, it is precisely the capacity to withstand rigorous scrutiny by the parties that gives a judgment its legitimacy.
If the presence of a laptop is perceived as a threat to solemnity, while dozens of trolleys of paper files are regarded as normal, the problem does not lie with the technology but with a conception of proceedings organised for the convenience of the adjudicative body rather than according to the requirements of genuine adversarial proceedings.
The Court is the institution responsible for reviewing the lawfulness of the acts of public power. For that very reason, the requirement of self-restraint in the exercise of authority must be more stringent for the adjudicative body, not less stringent than for administrative agencies. When the Court uses a circular to expand the scope of restriction beyond what statute provides, the harm does not stop at a single working tool; it raises the question whether the very body charged with upholding the law genuinely acknowledges that it is itself bound by the law.
Conclusion
The provision that presumptively prohibits bringing phones and laptops into court proceedings should be repealed—not because lawyers wish to enjoy more comfortable working conditions, but because the legal structure of the prohibition is wrong at its foundation. It selects the device as the subject-matter of prohibition when the risk lies in the act of use; it moves from regulating conduct to pre-emptively controlling property without a clear statutory delegation of authority; it reverses a presumption of freedom into a permission-seeking mechanism; it vests uncriteria-bound discretionary power in the presiding officer; it diminishes the practical capacity for a defence; and it produces material consequences that run counter to the very objectives of ensuring order, safety, and adjudicative efficiency.
The appropriate solution is not to ask judges to “be accommodating,” because that approach still maintains the view that using a working tool is an exception dispensed by the adjudicator. The provision needs to be redesigned so that parties to proceedings are entitled to bring and use devices for the purposes of accessing the case file, taking notes, comparing evidence, and presenting arguments, while being required to comply with specific restrictions on producing sound, communicating, recording audio or video, livestreaming, or disclosing information in breach of the law.
That solution is not a concession to lawyers; it is the inevitable consequence of the rule-of-law principle: a public authority may only prohibit conduct that actually creates a risk, may only use measures within the necessary limits, and cannot use its own convenience as justification for converting a lawful activity into a privilege requiring permission.
If subordinate instruments may arbitrarily expand upon statute, if the power to prescribe internal rules may be construed as a power to create new prohibitions, and if the conditions for exercising the right of defence may depend on criteria-free decisions of the presiding officer, then the question is no longer whether lawyers may bring a laptop into the courtroom. What is placed under challenge is a far deeper principle: whether statute is truly the limit of power, or merely a text that lower authorities continue to rewrite according to their own managerial needs.