Reconstruction Of The Civil Procedure Evidence

As the reform in the field of civil trial is being carried out, problems still remain concerning whether the classification of the evidences made by the theoretical and practical circles in China is scientific and how many kinds of evidences there are. But, this problem of theory is of essential and overall significance. To construct the evidence system of our country, to supply more theoretical support for the future law of civil court evidence, this paper points out the problems existing in the classification of the civil case evidence and proposes the concrete plan for the reform based on the comparison of the classification of the civil case evidences of various countries and areas, and on the historical investigation on the issue. The paper consists of six parts.Part one is an introduction. Evidence is the core of lawsuit. The type of the evidence is the core of and is essential to the evidence system. But little attention is paid either by the theoretical or practical circle in China to the classification of evidence, specifically, whether the classification is scientific and how to classify the evidences. This is where the goal of writing the paper lies.Part two is a comparison among various classifications of civil case evidence made by different countries and areas. Comparison is made between the Chinese classification of civil case evidence and those of the countries and areas belong to the two big law families. A comparison is also made between classification of civil case evidences in China and those of the S.V.O. and other socialist countries, to which our classification is closed related. Several characteristics are identified through the comparisons. First, the establishment of the types of civil case evidence of China is greatly affected by those of the former Soviet Union. Second, there are more types of evidence in China. Third, as other socialist countries, China takes the narration of the privies as the individual evidence. Forth, material evidence and investigation record are both taken as the evidence, other countries and areas only take one of the two, rarely take both.The third part is a historical review of the types of civil case evidence in China.Some people believe that our types of evidence are developed through history and can not be changed. In answer to this kind of view, this part makes an investigation to the historical changes concerning the types evidence so as to get some historical resources for the sake of reform. The findings are the types of evidence experienced three periods (namely, the ancient times, the neoteric times and the modern times) and two big changes (one is in Ming and Qing dynasties when laws are changed, which signifies the change from ancient to the neoteric times, change to the testimony of witness, script evidence, investigation and appraisal; the other is after the finding of P.R.C, which signifies the changes types of evidence from the neoteric to the modern times, namely to the present seven types of evidence). From the historical changes of the types of the evidence of our country, we can have a general view of the course of the development and change of the civil case evidence types. First, testimony of witness, material evidence and script evidence are well developed in the history of China, the position of "the king of evidence", i.e. affidavit is relatively low. Appraisal and investigation are merely the main ways of investigation. But, the result of the appraisal and the investigation scripts are not taken as independent evidence. Second, both of the two changes took place under the background learning and borrowing the experience of foreign countries. The first change learned something from German and Japan. The second change took the former Soviet Union's legislation as the example. Third, some of the types of evidence of our country are developed from history, e.g. testimony of witness, material evidence and script evidence; others are introduced from foreign countries, e.g. the narration of privies, appraisal result and i...