Research On Causality Proof In Environmental Infringement Disputes

With the rapid development of economy,the contradiction between man and nature has become increasingly prominent,resulting in different kinds of environmental problems,and the number of environmental infringement disputes has increased sharply.The constitutive elements of environmental infringement cases are as follows: first,pollution;Second,pollution damage;Third,there is a causal relationship between damage and pollution.Among them,compared with other constitutive elements,the proof of causality is more complex and more important,and the ultimate liability in environmental infringement cases is directly determined by the existence or absence of causality.Article 66 of The Tort Liability Law establishes that the polluter shall bear the burden of proof in the absence of a causal relationship between the act and the result of damage.In 2015,The Interpretation of the Supreme People’s Court on Several Issues concerning the Application of Law in the Trial of Environmental Tort Liability Disputes established the deduction rule of causality on the basis of the inversion rule of burden of proof,and further stipulated that the victim should prove the correlation between the tort and the damage result in the environmental tort disputes.From the perspective of legislation,this rule reduces the burden of proof of the infringed who is at a disadvantage in the environmental infringement dispute.But the judicial interpretation to be the causation of the burden of proof is only by the word "correlation" has carried on the simple rules,not on distribution of burden of proof and relevant certificate standards and methods to make specific provision,lead to the judge in the process of dealing with such cases there is no clear legal basis for unity.Therefore,this paper will analyze the problems existing in the process of handling environmental infringement cases by judges in judicial practice,and further discover the defects in the system design,so as to put forward more operable Suggestions on environmental infringement legislation,in the hope of contributing to the fairness,efficiency and standardization of environmental infringement litigation.By analyzing typical judicial cases and summarizing the data of judicial cases,the first part of this paper points out the existing problems in the judicial practice of environmental tort in China,such as the unclear distribution of the burden of proof inthe identification of causality,the non-specific provisions of the proof standards of the original and the defendant,and the means of proving causality.The second part introduces the connotation definition of causality in environmental tort cases and the characteristics of causality in environmental tort cases,which provides a theoretical basis for further exploring the content of causality in environmental tort cases.The third part probes into the legislative situation and the predicament in judicial practice about the burden of proof,the standard of proof and the auxiliary system in the distribution system of the burden of proof.Finally,by sorting out the typical cases in the process of judicial practice,according to the distribution of the burden of proof,the identification of the standard of proof and the auxiliary system of proof,the paper analyzes the problems,and puts forward feasible Suggestions for the perfection of the proof of causality of environmental infringement in China.