The Goals Of Criminal Evidence Law

Now there is booming about Criminal Evidence Law research in Chinese legal academe. But there are few researches about the goals of Criminal Evidence Law. The goals of Criminal Evidence Law are the basic theory of Criminal Evidential Science of Law and Criminal Procedural Science of Law. It's significant regarding the Criminal Evidence Law's fundamental research and practice. Therefore, this article attempts to research this important and complex issue, expected that can have a benefit to our national research about Criminal Evidence Law.Besides the introduction, this article is divided into six chapters. The main contents are as follows.The first chapter is divided into three parts, briefly discussing some basic concepts and theories. The first part elaborated the development of Teleology on philosophy and legal area. It explored the history of the law from achieving legal peace into protecting personal interests and also protecting social interests. It pointed out that the target of modern law should have subjectivity, objectivity, directivity and legitimacy.The second part defined the Criminal Evidence Law as a series of specific criteria which should be followed when collecting evidence, examining evidences, and using evidences to decide the fact This part distinguished goals of law and values of law. And it also distinguished legal goals and legal values of the Criminal Evidence Law. The legal goals and legal values are similar at the level of judging standards. But the goals are more subjective while the values are more objective. The legal goals point to the value of legal values, while the Legal values are the measuring standard of legal goals. The goals of Criminal Evidence Law are choosing the objective values of Criminal Evidence Law and measuring the quality of designed legal system based on this chosen.The third part reviewed the evolution of goals of the Criminal Evidence Law. It pointed out the master line of this evolution was fact-finding legally both in China and foreign countries. In modern times, goals of the Two Main Legal Systems are diversified. And such four goals as fact-finding, rule of law, improving the lawsuit efficiency, and consolidating the ethics order, were relatively prominent and important.The second chapter elaborated the most ancient and stable goals, namely fact-finding. It elaborated different opinions on the fact, the truth, theories about the truth, whether the truth can be discovered, and whether the discovery is real truth or legal truth. Considering about these opinions, this article viewed that the foundation of Criminal Evidence Law was admitting people could find the matching relationship between the world's statements and the fact. In practice, it means finding the balance between seeking the truth and compromise. Looking from the rules of evidence, nearly all the rules of evidence are related to fact-finding. The most typical one is the certificates rule and the best evidence rule of Criminal Evidence Law. Although they have different manifestations in the Two Main Legal Systems of Western Countries, they all point to fact-finding.The third chapter elaborated the goals of Criminal Evidence Law promoting realizing the rule of law. The core meaning of the law is protecting personal rights and freedoms restricted states or government's power. In the criminal proof process, the rights of citizens are often aggrieved by government legally or not legally. Compared with personal criminals, the indulgence of government's power is much more dangerous. Therefore, Criminal Evidence Law specially paid attention to maintaining the law. Sometimes this goal can be more preferential than discovering the truth. At present, most of criminal evidence rules already absorbed this goal, especially Free and Voluntary of Confession and Exclusionary Rule of Illegal Obtained Evidence. How ever, both of the Two Main Legal Systems have these two rules, but different countries put emphases on different points. Such as USA belonged to Anglo-American Law System emphasizes on limiting police's power. Meanwhile, Germany belonged to Civil Law System emphasizes on protecting individual rights.The fourth chapter elaborated the goals of Criminal Evidence Law improving the lawsuit efficiency. Under the judicial resource scarcity, the efficiency has great significance on the criminal evidence Law's normal operations and achieving justice. Improving efficiency depends on the rational allocation of resources in order to use the lowest inputs and get the biggest outputs. In the Criminal Evidence Law, many articles have the goals of improving the lawsuit efficiency. Most of them focused on the proof can be simplified, such as "proof without evidence". It mainly includes Judicial Notice and presumption which is beneficial to the claimer. These rules can improve the efficiency obviously, but maybe they will bring some damages for finding the truth.The fifth chapter elaborated the goals of Criminal Evidence Law consolidating the ethics and order. The demand for ethical order rooted in human nature. In a sense, it even is the fundamental of the law. The Criminal Evidence Law with modern spirit also should have these values such as maintaining the family ethics, social trust, fair benefits and so on. Even some times there will be conflicts between maintaining these values and finding the truth. In Criminal Evidence Law, this goal is indicated by the rule of Privilege of Refuse to Testify. This rule is embodied in the Two Main Legal Systems, but it has different performance and the scope.The sixth chapter goes back to view at China. The legislation of Criminal Evidence Rules in China gets behind. It also couldn't contribute too much in practices. This result is made by many reasons. It's not a short time to perfect the Criminal Evidence Law. Based on our national political, cultural, economic factors and practice requirements, we can choose the suitable contents to perfect our Criminal Evidence Law step by step.In brief, no matter what goals of Criminal Evidence Law are preferred, or what kind of Criminal Evidence Rules Standards are built, we need keep firmly in mind this point. In our country's future Criminal Evidence Law construction, finding the truth without considering the methods shouldn't be the goal of Criminal Evidence Law.