Construction Of Our Country's Environmental Civil Public Interest Litigation

Nowadays, the environmental pollution has become a global problem. prevention of environmental pollution and protection of public environmental is placed in front of the people in the world. We lack of effective legal remedy mechanism when the public environment is destroyed and it is reluctant to achieve the regulatory purpose of the environmental protection with only the state administrative power, so building an effective civil litigation relief mechanism has become a serious problem to be solved. Developed countries due to environmental pollution problems appear early, environmental protection laws created also relatively early and established a relatively perfect system of environmental civil public interest litigation. China's environmental pollution problem is getting worse too. This paper which is based on the present situation of our country's legislation and make the protection of public environment as the starting point, puts forward some plain views about establishment of environmental civil public interest litigation.The first part: the overview of environmental civil public interest litigation. The environment right that is the unification of substantive rights and procedural rights is the environmental civil public interest litigation's right foundation, including through the litigation means to relieve the environmental rights. Environmental civil public interest litigation means that any organization or individual authorized according to the laws and regulations, appealing the actions of violate the law and public environmental interests to the courts, and the courts put to trial according to the civil procedure.The second part: foreign environmental civil public interest litigation. The citizen litigation of United States, attorney general of the United Kingdom, group litigation system of German and French all have some characteristics of civil public interest litigation. Especially the citizen litigation of United States which relaxes the qualification of the plaintiff reflects the typical characteristics of the environmental civil public interest litigation; United States, German and French also provide a environmental civil public interest suit by the prosecuting authority.The third part: the necessity of establishing environmental civil public interest litigation. A lot of cases and the facts show that our country environment pollution is serious, and it becomes urgent to strengthen environmental protection. Chinese environmental civil litigation problem is that the environmental rights are too principled and the qualifications of litigants are too restrictive, and the representative system of litigation is difficult to assume the task of protecting the environment of public interest. When the public environmental rights have been infringed we are lack of effective relief litigation, so we need to break the existing pattern of civil litigation system and build public interest litigation system. The judicial practice of public protection in our country is also in an awkward position, and it is that there is not legal basis for the civil public interest litigation but there are lots of practical needs. So it also requires the establishment of environmental civil public interest litigation to resolve.The fourth part: the feasibility of establishing environmental civil public interest litigation. The development and increasingly mature of domestic and foreign theory about environmental civil public interest litigation provides a support that changes the theory to law. Our constitution, environmental law and procedure law don't have specified environmental civil public interest litigation, but it contains and provides us an idea with public interest litigation to protect the public environment, so the existing legislation provides a legal basis for the establishment of environmental civil public interest litigation. Social organizations, individuals and the prosecution file lawsuits to protect the public environment and increasing number of cases are accepted by the court. These specific trials provided us with detailed information on the judicial practice and useful exploration for the establishment of environmental civil public interest litigation.The fifth part: the specific ideas of constructing our country's environmental civil public interest litigation system. On the basis of establishing separated environmental litigation law,we should establish environmental civil public interest litigation system, that the citizens and social organizations is the main body and the prosecution is the supplementary body. We should first consider the citizens, social organizations filed the environmental civil public interest litigation, when citizens, social groups powerlessly shoulder the corresponding action, the prosecution should be considered an action. On the statute of limitations, the author advocates that in environmental public civil interest litigation the suit shouldn't be limited by statute of limitations. Citizens, social organizations is in a weak position, we should establish a system of legal cost in their favor. Meanwhile, in order to prevent the abuse of appeals, we should provide strict procedures for acceptance of cases and related responsibility system.