Study On Audio-visual Material In Civil Procedure

In the 1970s, the third revolution of science and technology reached a new era. Consequently, many technologies were put into practice in people's work and life. With the development of science and technology and with the improvement of people's life, audio material, visual material, computer-produced material and other high-tech material appear in people's daily and have become able to demonstrate facts in a case and their relative aspects. As a result, these new materials have deeply affected the traditional civil procedure. In order to be adjusted to the new changes, some counties have tried to regulate these new materials either by amending their Civil Procedure Law or Evidence Law or by enacting new laws in this regard. In China, legislators have made these new materials a new and independent means of proof, namely audio-visual material, in China's Civil Procedure Law. Since Civil Procedure Law of the People's Republic of China regards audio-visual material as a separate means of proof, discussions have been made on whether the name of audio-visual material is suitable and on its specific range. Because the audio-visual material only appeared a few years ago and the theory on this topic is immature, people have different opinions about such issue as the nature of audio-visual material, the relation between audio-visual material and other means of proof, and the basic requirement of audio-visual material as a means of proof. Especially in recent years, since people pay more and more attention to the protection of the privacy, secret recording has become a hot topic.Because the rules on audio-visual material in China's laws, regulations and judicial interpretations are not sufficient, there are so many problems about the understanding of those rules in practice that different courts have different attitudes to audio-visual material. In addition, the research on the theory of audio-visual material is not extensively conducted, and therefore there is no mature theory that can guide the judicial practice. The deficiency in law and in practice holds back the proper functioning of audio-visual material as a separate means of proof and the practice needs a better theory to follow. Therefore, in order to improve the theory on audio-visual material, it is necessary to analyze the problems in this field. To reach the above goal, this paper begins with the rules on audio-visual material in China Civil Procedure Law, and then, based on the judicial practice, analyzes thename and the range of audio-visual material. The author concludes, in this part, that the name of audio-visual material is fairly reasonable and the range of audio-visual material is different on a legal interpretation level and on a legislative level. Then, by using the civil procedure law theory continental law system, the author analyzes such issues on the audio-visual material as the admissibility, and its formal and substantive probative forces. In the end, the author, by analyzing prescription of audio-visual material in Civil Procedure Law and judicial interpretations, rebuild the standard of the validity of secret recording audio-visual material.