Study On The Protection Of Legal Interests In Environmental Pollution Crimes

With the increasingly severe global environmental pollution problem,protecting the environment has become one of the key research topics in China at present.The main charge for environmental protection in China’s criminal law is the crime of polluting the environment.In recent years,with the formulation and promulgation of the "Criminal Law Amendment(8)" and "Criminal Law Amendment(11)",it has sparked discussions in the academic community on issues related to the crime of polluting the environment.By sorting out the disputes related to the crime of polluting the environment,it can be found that the source of the dispute lies in the unclear legal interests protected by this crime.Therefore,determining the legal interests protected by the crime of polluting the environment has become the root cause of solving all problems.Influenced by the progress of environmental protection concepts and the transformation of value consensus,the temporal differences in the legal interests of environmental pollution crimes have led to their continuous dynamic changes.Through the analysis of various theories on the protection of legal interests of the crime of polluting the environment,it is found that the controversial theories on the protection of legal interests of the crime of polluting the environment at the emerging stage mainly focus on the following three kinds,namely,anthropocentrism legal interests,pure ecological environmental legal interests and ecological anthropocentrism legal interests.The common point of the above three theories is that they all emphasize the protection of environmental legal interests,but the difference is that there are different opinions on whether the subject of environmental legal interests must be a human subject.The anthropocentrism view of legal interests claims that the subject of environmental legal interests can only be human beings,the pure view of ecological environmental legal interests claims that the subject of environmental legal interests is the environment itself,and the ecological anthropocentrism view of legal interests claims that only the subject of environmental legal interests protected by norms can be human beings.Therefore,examining whether the subject of environmental legal interests must be a human subject has become the key to solving the problem of protecting legal interests in environmental pollution crimes.At the same time,the dispute over the protection of legal interests in the crime of polluting the environment has also had many impacts on this crime.For example,the dispute over legal interests has led to doubts about the understanding of the illegality of this crime and the symbolic legislative connection.The dispute over legal interests has affected the interpretation of the subjective and objective constituent elements of this crime,and the dispute over legal interests has affected the categorization of the legislative content of this crime and the legislative improvement of new legal interest protection measures.The focus of the controversy over the protection of legal interests in the crime of environmental pollution is on the examination of whether the subject of environmental legal interests must be human beings.The key to solving this problem lies in selecting appropriate methods.In fact,the above question can be abstracted as an exploration of the purpose of criminal law,that is,whether the "purpose" in criminal law must reflect the interest of human beings as the main body,and whether the subject of "legal interest" in the purpose of protecting legal interests must also be human beings,which involves the application of purpose interpretation methods.By analyzing and examining the concepts of "purpose" and "legal interest" in the purpose of criminal law,and combining them with the legislative purpose of environmental pollution crimes,it is concluded that the purpose of "purpose" and "legal interest" in criminal law always adheres to the principle of human beings as the main body.Based on this,the subject of environmental interests can only be human beings.Environmental interests meet the criteria for the division of legal interests in criminal law and can become environmental legal interests in criminal law norms.Finally,it is concluded that the legal interests protected by the crime of environmental pollution should be human centered legal interests(that is,anthropocentrism legal interests).The anthropocentrism view of legal interests emphasizes environmental interests as the core,and advocates the protection of human life and health legal interests by protecting human environmental legal interests.The determination of anthropocentrism’s view of legal interests can also clarify the relationship with the other two theories.Anthropocentrism and anthropocentrism belong to the same theory in essence.The former is the semantic evolution of the latter.There is no difference between the two theories in basic concepts.The pure concept of ecological environmental legal interests is excluded from the legal interests protected by the crime of polluting the environment because it excessively advocates that the subject of environmental legal interests should be separated from the human subject,which violates the fundamental purpose of standard creation.At the same time,the anthropocentrism view of legal interests also interprets the provisions of the legislation on the crime of environmental pollution and the provisions of the judicial interpretation on the incrimination of pure environmental violations,aiming to clarify that the provisions of the incrimination of pure environmental violations still reflect the interest of protecting human centered legal interests,and focus on the environmental legal interests of people.The determination of anthropocentrism legal interests has the following two advantages.One is that the determination of anthropocentrism legal interests can clarify the behavior structure of this crime and limit the punishment scope of the crime of environmental pollution with the structure of consequential crime.The second is that the determination of the legal interests of anthropocentrism is conducive to the realization of the confirmation of environmental rights,which responds to the growing theoretical call of the academic community on the confirmation of environmental rights at this stage.The ultimate purpose of determining the legal benefits of environmental pollution crime protection is to solve the current controversial issues of environmental pollution crime through the application of the legal benefits function.As is well known,legal interest has functions such as illegality evaluation,interpretation,classification,and critical legislation.The solution of the controversial issue of the crime of polluting the environment depends on the application of the function of legal interests of anthropocentrism.Firstly,to clarify the relationship between the evaluation of the illegality of environmental pollution crimes and symbolic legislation,it is necessary to use the illegality evaluation function of legal interests.Although the solution to the symbolic legislative issues of environmental pollution crimes can be corrected through legislation or remedied through judicial restrictions and other means.However,under the guidance of the principle of priority in interpretation,this problem can be completely solved through explanatory methods.The legal interests protected by the crime of polluting the environment are people centered legal interests,that is,anthropocentrism legal interests.The anthropocentrism view of legal interests focuses on the protection of human environmental legal interests.At this time,the basis of the symbolic legislation that the crime of polluting the environment is based on regulating environmental risks no longer exists,that is,the symbolic legislation that advocates the protection of human life and body legal interests through regulating environmental risks has become untenable.The anthropocentrism view of legal interests believes that protecting people’s environmental legal interests should be the main task at present.Environmental risk has become the environmental legal interests with real content in the normative sense from the concept outside the criminal law.The essence of the illegal evaluation of the crime of environmental pollution is that the pollution behavior has caused damage to people’s environmental legal interests,which meets the requirements of the principle of legal interests protection.Therefore,the crime of polluting the environment does not belong to symbolic legislation,nor is it related to the theory of risk society as the source.Secondly,the interpretation of the subjective and objective elements of the crime of environmental pollution needs to rely on the interpretation function of the anthropocentrism legal interest,which belongs to the goal of the interpretation of the elements of the crime and guides the interpretation of the elements of the crime.The interpretation of objective constituent elements mainly targets controversial "violations of national regulations" and "serious environmental pollution".In the interpretation of "violating national regulations",the first thing to be clear is whether "violating national regulations" still has the value of existence,which is also one of the current controversial issues in the academic community."Violating national regulations" reflects the administrative subordination of the crime of environmental pollution,and the anthropocentrism view of legal interests advocates that this crime should adhere to the relative administrative subordination.Under this premise,understanding the positioning and role of "violating national regulations" should be regarded as a blank crime that reflects legislative techniques,only serving to screen whether the behavior constitutes a crime.Moreover,the legal interests of the administrative order embodied in the "illegal state regulations" also serve the legal interests of anthropocentrism in essence.In the interpretation of "seriously polluting the environment",the anthropocentrism view of legal interests believes that it is a constituent element of the establishment of the crime of polluting the environment."seriously polluting the environment" reflects the restriction of the scope of the establishment of the crime of polluting the environment,limiting the aggressive expansion of this crime.The form of responsibility for the crime of polluting the environment is also influenced by the protection of legal interests in this crime.In terms of the interpretation of the subjective constituent elements,the anthropocentrism view of legal interests believes that the form of responsibility of the crime of environmental pollution belongs to intent,and advocates that "violation of national regulations" should not be the content of intent.Finally,the classification function of anthropocentrism legal interests and the function of critical legislation are needed to achieve the typology of the legislative content of the crime of environmental pollution and the formulation of legal interest protection measures.The categorization of legislative content on environmental pollution crimes and the formulation of environmental legal protection measures have also attracted the attention of the academic community.Although legal interests have the function of criticizing legislation,legislative correction can only be the last means.Only when judicial interpretation is powerless,can we have to seek the help of legislative means to maximize the stability of the legislative text.The reason why the classification function of anthropocentrism legal interests is combined with the function of critical legislation is that the classification function is the guiding ideology and the legislative function is the means of realization in the research on the classification of the legislative content of the crime of environmental pollution.Both of them play a role together.The classification function of anthropocentrism legal interests advocates that the typology of the legislative content of the crime of environmental pollution mainly includes the typology of the charges and the typology of the pre law provision system.The former advocates that the typology of the charge system should be formed by subdividing various specific environmental legal interests,while the latter advocates that the typology of the pre law provision system of the crime of environmental pollution should be realized through the compilation of the environmental code.At the same time,the function of anthropocentrism legal interest criticism legislation advocates taking environmental remediation measures as criminal law measures to protect environmental legal interests,which is also determined by the particularity of environmental legal interests,that is,the existing means are difficult to directly and effectively protect the damaged environmental legal interests.In terms of the normative positioning of environmental remediation measures,the anthropocentrism view of legal interests advocates that it should be regarded as a sentencing circumstance.