Abstract: Against the background of “whole-process people's democracy” and “source governance of litigation,” the functional role of grassroots courts is rapidly shifting from passive adjudication to proactive judicial engagement. Based on empirical data from the People's Court of M County, Yunnan Province (2022—2024), this paper takes the “One Village, One Judge” mechanism as the object for a case study. By employing literature analysis and empirical research methods, it constructs a four-stage closed-loop governance model–precise problem identification, deep resource deployment, multi-party collaborative co-governance, and reconstruction of the rule-of-law ecosystem–to analyze the institutional logic and practical pathways of this mechanism. The study finds that this mechanism effectively facilitates the extension of judicial services to the grassroots level, the pre-litigation resolution of disputes, and the enhancement of legal awareness. However, it has also identified a number of shortcomings, such as the depth of institutional integration, the efficiency of coordination and public participation. In light of this, it proposes optimization strategies such as a “four-party joint reporting mechanism,” “digital early warning tools,” and “non-litigation service stations” to provide institutional references for promoting embedded governance in grassroots courts.

Key words: One Village,One Judge, grassroots court, proactive judicial engagement