Standard Interpretation And Empirical Study On The Scope Of Environmental Administrative Public Interest Litigation

After two years of trial,Environmental Administrative Public Interest Litigation(EAPIL)has been confirmed by the Administrative Procedure Law.The extent to which EAPIL can exert its system function depends on the determination of the scope of accepting a case.The scope of acceptance of EAPIL includes three core elements: litigants,acts of defendants and interests involved.By sorting out the existing norms on the scope of acceptance of EAPIL in China,the defendant not only include administrative organs,but also include "organizations authorized by laws,regulations and rules";the acts of defendant should include illegal administrative acts and administrative omissions;the interests involved include national interests and social and public interests.Although the current legal norms have given a clearer standard to determine the scope of accepting cases in EAPIL,many problems have been exposed in judicial practice.As far as the subject system is concerned,whether the provisions of procuratorial organs as the sole subject of prosecution are reasonable,and how the role of procuratorial organs in litigation should be positioned need further clarification.How to determine the omission in the defendant’s action and whether the "standard of conduct" and "standard of result" adopted in judicial practice are feasible still need to be further explored.How to identify the interests involved in EAPIL? Whether national interests and social interests are the interests to be remedied in EAPIL needs further demonstration.Combining with the current judicial practice,we should pay attention to the following points in determining the scope of acceptance of EAPIL: Firstly,in order to avoid the procuratorial organs "monopolizing" the public interest litigation rights of environmental administration,social organizations should be included in the scope of plaintiffs in the future.In order to solve the problem of role conflict of procuratorial organs,we should fully combine the stage characteristics of EAPIL,identify procuratorial organs in the pre-litigation stage as legal supervisors,and identify procuratorial organs in the litigation stage as public interest litigants.Secondly,the criterion for the determination of the accused omission should adopt the criterion of "substantive violation oriented by results",which is based on the judgment of whether the interests of the proposed relief are damaged or not,and observe whether the administrative actions of the administrative organs have substantially improved the ecological environment from a dynamic perspective.In addition,Abstract environmental administrative acts should be included in the scope of accepting cases in order to realize the protection of ecological environment from the root.Finally,according to the theory of interest hierarchy,environmental interests should be recognized as the interests of EAPIL to be relieved,through the relief of environmental interests to achieve the protection of national interests and social public interests.