On The Reform And Perfection Of Witness System In China Civil Procedure Law

Testimony of witnesses is a kind of evidence commonly adopted in civil litigation. In modern actions, witness appearing in court should be the prerequisite for realizing justice both in substance and procedure. However, on account of these facts that the defects in the legislation of civil procedural law; the negligence of witness appearing in court in judicial practice and little research on the system of witnesses in theory, the phenomenon that witnesses who refuse to give evidence or perjure or refuse to appear in court and repeat testimony has been more and more popular, which becomes the big bottleneck to the further judicial reform in our country.The article consists of four parts. First, the author, after discussing the foundation of theory of giving evidence by witness, thinks that giving evidence by witness in not only the legal obligation, but the realization of his own will; not only the external coerciveness of the law, but the internal needs of safeguarding common interests of the society and an insurance for the interests of the witness in litigation field. Moreover, it fully conforms to the principle of litigation economy; for it not only reduces the investment of the party and state in litigation, but enhance the efficiency of action. Then the author makes a comparative study on the systems of testimony of witness in Anglo-American law system and continental law system. In the third part of the article, the author analyses the defects and shortcomings of our present system of witness giving evidence. Based on that, the author, through absorbing experiences of foreign countries and grounding on the reality of our country, puts forward his own imagination for the perfection of system of giving evidence by witnessfrom the following aspects: system of witness subject, safeguarding system of witness appearing in court, procedure of giving evidence by witness and system of protection for witnesses, hoping to promote the process of judicial reform and realization of judicial justice..