Rationalization Of Legal Rights Provisions In China

The debate of "Chinese style of crossing the road" caught almost everyone sinking into the melancholy if morality is declining in China. Accordingly, the suggested solutions were focus on morality. But neither moral education nor legal enforcement of moral standards eradicated the problem. For example, in Beijing, Shenzhen and some other cities, the local governments enforced the jaywalking legislation by tickets. But there came some offensive reactions towards police by jaywalkers. The reason why people choose jaywalking is from their moral degeneration, but from their pedestrians’ legal rights ignored by the drivers. Therefore, the real reason of social problems like this is the irrational legal rights legislations. If we want to solve the problem, we should think about how to balancing the legal rights of both pedestrians and drivers, not about the problem of morality.The phrase of "legal rights provisions" is adopted in this analysis, instead of "rights rules" or "authorization provisions".Legal rights have been the core of legislation in China for a long period. The large amount of legal rights provisions plays an important role in the practice of law. Legal rights legislation gets great support from "Right-oriented Paradigm", which is the prevailing view of current legal rights theory in China.However, the legal rights provisions are not perfect There are defects in both formal rationality and substantive rationality. The system of legal rights provisions is incoherent. The symbol words are ill-used. The expressions are not consistent. Sexist language still exists in legal rights provisions. In some statutes, as the legislators value management function above human rights, interest allocation above social order, rights idea above behavior guiding, they sometimes pay little attention to the operability of rights provisions, which hardly serves as a guide for people’s actions.The lack of substantive rationality of legal rights provisions is related to the defect of "Right-oriented Paradigm". In essence, the "Right-oriented Paradigm" is about the relationship of legal rights and duties in statutes, indifferent to the validity of law. In practice, it leads to rights polarization and Chinese being indifferent to each other. The lack of legal consciousness in Chinese is a sharp contrast to the development of rights legislation.In fact, there are some misunderstandings in "Right-oriented Paradigm" about the difference of legal rights history between China and western countries. Firstly, it is considered that legal duties are rarely been talked in western countries. But there are some legal provisions even in medieval period. In the theory of legal rights, legal duties precede rights. Especially, in the20th century, the western countries are getting increasingly serious about legal duties. Secondly, the concept of modern legal rights created in western countries doesn’t mean the different path to rights development between China and western countries. Thirdly, the tradition that Chinese people dislike lawsuit doesn’t mean that they don’t have the awareness of their legal rights. Chinese people only choose a different way to achieve the realization of their rights through collective rights in the ancient times. The common ground between China and western countries is to create a culture with mutual trust and respect.Legislators should take this seriously. While establishing the system of legal norms, legislators must face further requirements of substantive rationality. The focus of legal rights legislation should shift from creating the concepts of various legal rights to the validity of law, from interest allocation to human relationships, from merely declaration of rights to also behavior guiding.From the perspective of formal rationality, the legislative drafting technique should be promoted. Firstly, both the names of legal acts and the legal rights systems should be consistent. Secondly, the symbol words and the expressions should be used in the same way. Last but not least, gender-neutral language should be used in rights provisions.With the establishment of "the socialist system of laws with Chinese characteristics", legislators should have a mass perspective, respecting the wisdom of Chinese people and learning from them, to continuously improve legal rights legislation. Legal rights system should be full of rational persuasion to achieve "the governance of good law".