Public Interest Litigation System

(Civil) public interest action emerged as a new social and legal phenomenon in China in recent years, which caused the extensive concern among academic circle and practical institutions. Whether civil public interest action is feasible in China, how to make it incorporate modern civil procedural system and how to develop the civil public interest action system in China, all these important issues not only concern the ideas of civil procedure but also fundamentally involve the functions of civil procedure and role of judicature. Based on the expansion of functions of civil procedure and regarded examination and analysis of the phenomenon in judicial practices in China in recent years as the starting-point, this dissertation will try to analyze systematically civil public interest action in order to establish our rational mechanism of protecting public interest. The dissertation consists of five chapters.In chapter one, the author puts forward the question and introduces civil public interest action. Starting with the analysis of some typical cases, the article points out that public interests are beginning to enter into the view and field of civil litigation. Actually, the protection of public interests cannot be accomplished and realized through one single way or one single approach. It is the way for the protection of the plural public interests that is the consequent choice to perfect the safeguarding mechanism of public interest. In order to make the case for public interest have a expedite litigation channel and play its role in protecting the public interest, it is the evitable choice to establish the legal system of civil public interest action to solve the problems. Though civil public interest action is gradually springing up and catching peoples' attention, public interest action is in a awkward position, making it difficult to play its due role fully, because of the absence of the corresponding regulation of the legal system. Under the impetus of the judicial practice, academic circles in our country has begun to pay more and more attention to civil public interest action and has made certain preliminary achievement after experiencing a course from strange to familiar with; from looking on to thinking about, even to make some analysis and argumentation of civil public interest action. However, on the whole, there is more general introduction and less in-depth research, more scattered structural design and less systematic construction. So, more in-depth study is necessary.The introduction of public interest action concerns the transformation of the litigation both in conception and structure involving every aspects of civil procedure, which asystematic and whole transforming guidance is needed. However, from the long-term and ultimate point of view, the most important thing is that the key point of the construction and benign development of public interest action of our country lies not in the outside questions such as the awarding and expanding of the plaintiff's qualification, but in the whole operational mechanism and function of litigation can be suitable for public interest action. Because a litigation system which cannot accommodate public interest action will be difficult to take effect in the end, even the plaintiff's qualification is expanded. Thus, to establish the system of civil public interest action of our country, the crucial task is to expand the function of civil justice.Chapter two is the summarization of civil public interest action. On the basis of supporting the dual mechanism of public interest action, this part points out that civil public interest action refers to a kind of legal system in which the specific state organ, public organization and related citizens file a civil lawsuit against the civil wrongs done to the public interest so as to protect and defend public interests through judicial procedure. According to its different forms in the litigation, civil public interest action can be generally divided into three categories as following: civil public interest action for scattered...