Research On The Environmental Public Interest Litigation--Focusing On The Environmental Citizen Suit In The United States Of America

Environmental public interest litigation is an important environmental legal regime in the developed countries, which means any person, organizations or governmental agencies may commence an action for legal relief against any person who is alleged to impair environmental public interest for the protection of the environment and resources. Today, environmental citizen suit in the USA is the most developed and ripe in the world. Therefore research on it will be helpful to environmental legal regime construction of China. The article focuses the environmental public interest on the environmental citizen suits of the USA. The article includes seven parts: preface, the summary of the environmental public interest litigation, the rationales of the environment citizen suit in the USA, the citizen suit of the federal environmental statutes: a static analysis, the citizen suit of the federal environmental statutes: a dynamic state analysis, the environmental citizen suit in the states of the USA, the regime background of the citizen suit in the USA.The article first discusses the rationales of the environmental citizen suit in the USA, which include the private attorney general doctrine, the private enforcement doctrine, the common trust doctrine and the environmental rights doctrine. The essence of the private attorney general doctrine is the private has the standing to sue for the protection of the public interests as the attorney general has the power to bring an action for the protection of the public interests. The private enforcement doctrine means that the private may bring a citizen suit against the environmental violation and administrative violation under the environmental law authority to enforce the environmental law. Thecommon trust doctrine means the environment and resources belong to the common property, which is being held in trust by the trustee, the government or some organization. The trustee has the trusteeship to manage and utilize the trust for the public interest. Any person has the legal authority to bring an action for the protection of the environment and resources from pollution, impairment or destruction. The core of the environmental rights doctrine is any person has the right to the clean and helpful environment and may bring an action against any environmental impairment or destruction under the legal authority to enforce the right. The environmental citizen suit regime in the USA includes two types: federal environmental citizen suit and state environmental citizen suit. The article researches on the federal environmental citizen through the static analysis and dynamic analysis.The static analysis on the federal environmental citizen suit mainly discusses the primary contents of the citizen suit provisions of the federal environmental statutes. The main contents of the citizen suit provisions include the plaintiff, the defendant, the scope of suit, the types of suit, the limits of suit, the types of judgments, the jurisdiction courts, etc.As a litigation regime, jurisdiction has an important role in the environmental citizen suit in the USA. The environmental citizen suit develops and improves through the jurisdictional enforcement. So the dynamic analysis on the federal environmental citizen suit mainly analyses the enforcement situation of the environmental citizen suit in the federal courts. Standing to sue and the limit of the environmental citizen suit are the most important matters in the jurisdictional enforcement and have a far-reaching impact on the enforcement of the environmental citizen suit. The fourth part of the article centers on the two matters. Standing is the core subject in the jurisdictional enforcement of theenvironmental citizen suit, which goes through a complicated history from the 1970's to now. The standing of law in the federal courts is comparative liberal from the 1970's to 1980's. In general the plaintiff of the environmental citizen suit does not have the duty to show there is inevitable relation between the alleged violation and the injure of the...