2006年10月底,全国人大常委会通过了关于修改人民法院组织法的决定。尽管只是改动了一个条文,却为最高人民法院正式收回死刑核准权扫清了最后的法律障碍,为死刑制度的一项重大变革划上了圆满的句号。而死刑核准权持续20多年的下放、回归历程,也从一个侧面记录了一部令人百感交集的法治变迁史,见证了司法理念、刑事制度的艰难进步,也见证了人权意识、公民社会的茁壮成长。 By the end of October 2006, the NPC Standing Committee passed a decision on revising the Organic Law of People’s Courts. Although only a provision was changed, the formal legal blockade of the death penalty for the Supreme People’s Court cleared the legal obstacles and put a successful conclusion to a major change in the death penalty system. The death penalty approval authority lasted more than 20 years of decentralization and return process, but also from a side record of a thoroughly mixed history of the evolution of the law, witnessed the concept of justice, the difficult progress of the criminal system, but also witnessed the awareness of human rights, civil society growing up healthily.