Antitrust Judicial Review Jurisdiction

Judicial review of antitrust decisions, as controlling mechnism of antitrust enforcment as well as remedy channel for citizen's rights, determines the effect of antitrust enforcement and therefore plays a principal role in antitrust law. Among all the issues of judicial review of antitrust decisions, which court shall have jurisdiction to review antitrust decisions is crucial and should be addressed in the first place. Owing to its significance, the issue of jurisdiction is well stipulated in foreign antitrust legislations. On the contrary, our Anti-monopoly Law does not provide the jurisdiction of judicial review of antitrust decisions, and yet the Administrative Litigation Law cannot be applied because of its own deficiencies. Consequently, the research on jurisdiction of judicial review of antitrust decisions is of significance to enrich our theory of judicial review of antitrust decisions as well as to provide some guidance and reference for our judicial practice .This dissertation consists of four chapters as below.Chapter One explores the definition and the scope of judicial review of antitrust decisions. After clarifying the concept of judicial jurisdiction as well as the jurisdictional regime in foreign countries and analyzing the problems existing in our jurisdictional regime, the chapter redefines the jurisdiction of judicial review of antitrust decisions and its scope, and highlights that the jurisdiction of judicial review of antitrust decisions refers to not only the division between trial courts, but also deciding the type of reviewing court and reconstructuring the trial level system.Chapter Two focuses on three modes of courts reviewing antitrust decisions. In foreign countries, there exist three modes of courts reviewing antitrust decisions: administrative court, specialized court and genernal court, esp. appellate court. This chapter dipicts their respective characteristics and analyzes the reasons for each mode being choosed , and further concludes that the choice of reviewing court is connected with antitrust administrative enforcing mechanism on one hand, and adapts to the country's judicial regime and tradition.Chapter Three mainly talks about our choice of jurisdictional mode. After giving an overview of Chinese antitrust enforcment system and judical review jurisdiction, this chapter comes to a conclusion that general courts,esp. appellate court is the appropriate court for China to review antitrust decisions, and further puts forward a framework of establishing a specialized branch in Higher People's Court to review antitrust decisions.Chapter Four deals with how to settle down the jurisdiction issue in several complicated cases, and more specifically addresses a number of issues such as local antitrust enforcment, administrative reconsideration of antitrust decisions and antitrust enforcement in regulated sectors.