Empirical Rule In Civil Procedural Law

Under the modern civil litigation system, various countries have abandoned the absolute discretional evaluation of evidence, and imposed restrictions on discretional evaluation of evidence from the pointviews of judges, evidence and proceedings in order to prevent judges from making arbitrary decisions. With the experience of adjudication accumulated over a long period, the empirical rule has become the establised unwritten rule on restricting judges in fact finding, and has recerived an adequate attention from judges, lawyers and scholars. The objective requirements for the judge’s application of the empirical rule in finding facts make the discretional evaluation of evidence justifiable. In short, the judge’s disrectional evaluation of evidence cannot go against the empirical rule. Such a rule does not only provide the judge with grounds for his interpretation of law, application of law and fact finding, but provide the superior court and the public with the objective standards for their making judgment on the trial of the judge and the reasonableness of the result of his trial.2So far, the important issue of fact finding has been addressed only in works and essays on evidence, rather than in a monograph. It shows that such an important issue has been surprisingly neglected by the acdemic circle and the practice circle and that such conscious or unconscious neglect explains why there is dissension over the fact finding. Under the existing judicial system in our country, with the authorization of the judicial interpretation, the judge has the authority to exercise the disrectional evaluation of evidence. However, the lack of regulation of law on the fact finding makes such authroity free of restrictions, which is likely to result in arbitrary decisions of the judge, and consequently unfavourable to judicial justice.This dissertation is an initial attempt. Starting from redesigning the methodology of fact finding, it compares the empirical rules under different judicial systems. What’s more, it makes an effort to analyze the history and status quo of the judicial practice in our country in order to search for the general mode of provisions on the empirical rule. It advocates for the overall amendment of the Civil Procedural Law, including an explicit provision on the discretional evaluation of evidence with the empirical rule as a supplement to guarantee the correctness of the findings of facts, and eventually to achieve the goal of the Civil Procedural Law to protect the legal rights and interests of the parties.