The Legislation And Perfection Of The Crime Of Bigamy

Chinese society is based on the traditional family-based values. Being the basic constituent unit, a family mainly consists of marriage, thus the health and stability of marriage is not only related to the happiness of a family, but also directly affects the stability of the entire social order and harmony. However, with the development of society and change of people's ideas, people's sense of family responsibility has gradually grown weak, and bigamy phenomenon has become a serious social problem, which is a direct threat to the social harmony and stability. Although the problem is growing, the existing legal provisions against bigamy seem powerless, and related cases accepted by the court are limited, not to mention the ones punished by law. All these facts show that the existing law against bigamy is not applicable to the current social situation. The failure of effectively suppressing and combating the bigamy is due to the problems in the current legislative practice against bigamy crime.This article first identifies the concept of bigamy crime both in the legislative and judicial aspects, and then discusses the constituent elements of bigamy, whether it is guilty or not, as well as the differences between bigamy and other crimes. Then the existing problems are raised, and the reasons for the difficulty of Cognizance are analyzed and sorted out. Finally sound legislative proposals of bigamy are put forward.This paper is structured as follows:Chapter I: On the legislative provisions of the current crime of bigamy. First, starting from the legislative level, this paper focuses on the concept and elements of bigamy, and then sorts, analyzes and concludes the concept, articles and the components on bigamy in the current China's Criminal Law and relevant judicial interpretations. Secondly, according to China's current Law of Criminal Procedure and the judicial interpretations, this paper studies on how to start the prosecution of bigamy cases, then figures out the current?proceeding system set for bigamy as "rely mainly on private prosecution and supplemented by prosecution ", the burden of proof in the bigamy case is also analyzed.Chapterâ…¡: Identify the boundaries of bigamy in detail. Defining bigamy crime and distinguishing it from other crimes help to deeply analyze the problems while maintaining bigamy crime, which also provides a theoretical base for the discussion next.Chapterâ…¢: problems and improvement of China's current bigamy law, which is the focus of this paper. First of all, the existing problems are raised, and then sound measures to solve the problem are put forward. In Section I, the current defects and shortcomings of proposed bigamy are raised respectively on legislative and judicial practice levels, the reasons for these problems are then explained. On the legislative level, the problems include that the concept of bigamy is vague and the standard of "living together as husband and wife outside" is also indefinite, both these problems result in blank of establishing guilt; The provisions lack specific regulations on the crime circumstance and property punishment; Extensional definition and the covering area of the charge are too small to combat a number of serious bigamy such as "keeping a concubine (Bao Er Nai)". Difficulties in judicial practice against bigamy include: the setting of the charge to be a private prosecution will make the public security organs negligent to exercise the power of prosecution, while the victim is unwilling to institute criminal private prosecution for various reasons. Even when the victim is willing to bring a private prosecution, there are still lots of problems such as obtaining evidence, the overweighed duty of proof, and the risk that the prosecutor may lose. All these problems make the phenomenon of bigamy grow serious without any strong blow.Section II focuses on a solution to combat bigamy. Respectively, improvement should be made both on the legislative and judicial levels: Firstly, the concept and the standard should be identified; Secondly, the maximum statutory sentence of bigamy should be increased, and punishment should be prescribed according to the severity of the circumstances; Property punishment need to be configured, and supplemented by civil and administrative punishment. On the level of procedural law, bigamy crime is suggested to be brought as public prosecution.