| Digest The judicial reform in China has been listed on the agenda, but what is the key of the reform of civil proceeding? The article points out that to position the mode of the civil proceeding again, to enrich, reform and perfect evidence system and other systems concerned, is not only an effective way of promoting judicial reform, but also the necessity of judicial reform.The mode of civil proceeding covers the operating system, the relation between judges and subjects of civil litigation and also the relation between the subjects, etc, many these kinds of important matters. The mode of civil proceeding involves two principal matters: who, the judges or the parties, are the determiners of the procedure, and how the judges make the decision. According to the development history of civil proceeding, it can be classified into five types: accusatory proceeding, inquisitional proceeding, ex officio doctrine proceeding, adversary proceeding and mixed proceeding. Adversary proceeding is a popular mode at present, so the article makes a typical comparison between the adversary system represented by the U.S.A. and the non-adversary system represented by Germany.In civil proceeding, antagonistic relation between the parties and the judges' special status form the basic structure of the mode of civil proceeding. During the process of trial, judges shall make the decision by a neutral attitude in pursuance of the structure of parties. In order to assure justice, the 'neutral' does not exclude the judges' limited intervention to the procedure—to exercise properly the power of explanation. The judges' power should be restricted by the parties' rights, that is to say, the parties form the object of trial through their inherent right of disposing and debate doctrine, and thus establish the structure for the judges' decision.The process of testification in legal proceeding differs from the scientific research on finding the truth. To make the judgement, the court has to rely on the limited information, i.e, the evidence that is provided by the interested parties. The information that can be used as evidence must possess such three principal characteristics as materiality, relevancy (or testification) and effectiveness (or legality). Evidence can be classified into three main types: verbal evidence, document evidence and physical evidence, and different forms of evidence need different methods of verification. The party is entitled to petition to the judges for investigating and verifying evidence, thus the scope of the judges' verification is determined. At the time the judges find the facts, the facts of judicial cognizance and self-identification do not require the party to adduce evidence, and the facts that can not be determined should be judged on the doctrine of burden of proof, and then the inner affirmation shall be formed according to the evidence that has been known before the proceeding ends.In view of existing situation of the litigation system in our country, the article suggests that we should courageously absorb and use the essence of the two principal legal systems to reform and perfect civil proceeding system of our country. First, the mode of litigation should be positioned on mixed proceeding-the mode of adversary proceeding dominating with the assistance of the pattern of ex officio doctrine. Second, testification system shall be established to confirm, in the form of legislation, that the purpose of testification is legal truth, the method of testification is modern discretional evaluation of evidence (through inner conviction), the standard of testification is high probability. Third, the rule of evidence corresponding to the mode of proceeding and system of testification should be established, making it easier for the judges to verify the evidence, restricting the judges' excessive discretion. The article makes concrete suggestions on several rules of four aspects of procedure as the value of the proof, the privilege of rejecting to bear witness and producing evide...
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