On The Construction And Perfection Of Civil Judicial Hierarchy System In Our Country

Judicial hierarchy system refers to the system that a judgment of a civil case is effective after being tried by several different rank courts, which is one of the basic systems of civil litigation and an important component of the judiciary system in a country. Constructing a scientific and rational civil judicial hierarchy is necessary to realize the fairness and efficiency of civil litigation and to ensure people's civil rights practically. In recent years, the system of the second instance as the finality in our country exposes its drawback and defect and is difficult to adapt to the development of the present society with the rapid development of the market economy and sharp increasing of the civil case filed to the people's court. This thesis proposes the basic idea and model of the civil judicial hierarchy by introducing the current situation and problems of judicial hierarchy in our country and drawing lessons from foreign countries and constructs the civil judicial hierarchy that should be adopted in our country. This thesis is composed of four chapters. The first chapter introduces the current situation of civil judicial hierarchy and the problems existing in our country. The judicial hierarchy adopted in our country is the second instance as the finality, which stipulates that the party can appeal provided he isn't obey the judgment of the first instance of the local people's court, the judgment made by the higher court is the final and the party cannot appeal again. The court of all ranks can become the first instance court in our country. The second instance includes trials on law application and trials on facts, limited to the scope that the party claimed. The party can appeal on any cases tried by the first instance to the direct higher court and cannot bypass the immediate leadership and present the appeal and complaints to higher levels. The judicial system of the second instance as the finality is decided by the specific historical and economic condition in our country and the consideration of the principles of lawsuit efficiency and lawsuit economy. With the development of society, this drawbacks of this judicial hierarchy has already been exposed gradually, there are three respects mainly as following: First of all, it is difficult for the system of the second instance as the finality to conquer the local protectionism and to ensure the trial quality of the case; Second, there are more and more cases needing rehearing which indicates that the second instance as the finality cannot adapt to present development of society already; Moreover, the conditions of appeal stipulated in the second instance as the finality is too wide, which cause waste of lawsuit resource. As a result, the civil judicial hierarchy in our country should be reformed and perfected according to the request of development of market economy with the changes of the national conditions of our country, absorbing the positive factors of modern judicial hierarchy system. The second chapter compares and draws lessons from foreign civil judicial hierarchy system. The countries that are developed in legal system adopt the third instance as the finality and the three-tier court is usually the Supreme Court. Another characteristic feature in foreign country is the system of leapfrog appeal, which means when the parties have reached an agreement and had no dispute of fact in the first instance, they can appeal to the court of the third instance and bypass the second instance. This system utilizes thefunction of the third instance court to unify the legal opinion, reflecting the flexibility of judicial hierarchy and economizing judicial resources. There is exception in the system of the third instance as the finality in foreign countries, which is one-tier and two-tier is used to the small lawsuit in order to guarantee the function of judicial hierarchy and alleviate the pressure of the ordinary litigation procedure. The foreign countries that stipulate the third instance as the finality limit the appeal conditions in order to ensure the function of the Supreme Court to unify legal opinion generally, which is different from the system in China. The system of the third instance as the finality is a typical Pyramid type judicial system. The function of the procedure near the top of the tower in making the policy and serving the public is stronger, and the function of the procedure near the bottom of the tower is more stronger in solving the dispute and serving the private, which reflects the civil procedure has double purposes to solve the dispute and maintain the legal order. The establishment of the judicial hierarchies based on the following value goals, which are safeguarding the unity of the justice, ensuring the exactness of the justice and coordinating the end and proper of the justice. The third chapter introduces the basic idea and mode to construct the civil judicial hierarchy. The basic value goal of civil litigation is fairness and efficiency and the civil litigation reaching the goal is ideal. The balance of fairness and efficiency is the foundation to construct the judicial hierarchy. Because fairness emphasizes procedure and result and efficiency emphasizes speed and process, the coordinated development and joint progress of the two can realize the legal value to the maximum extent The establishment and arrangement of judicial hierarchy should regard reaching the balance of thefairness and efficiency as the goal. Just because of the different settlement of lawsuit fairness and lawsuit efficiency, different countries stipulated different judicial hierarchies. There are three basic forms of civil judicial hierarchy, which are the first instance as the finality, the second instance as the finality and the third instance as the finality. Various countries adopt two-tier system and three-tier system at present. The three-tier system can ensure that the cases are tried more fairly and the second-tier system can economize the lawsuit cost, as a result, the two kinds of systems have their own strong points and no absolute standard to judge which is better and which is worse of the two. Different countries and regions should establish a main judicial hierarchy and implement some flexible systems and exceptional measures according to specific conditions to reach the justice and high efficiency, and the single system in one country is unsuitable. The fourth chapter proposes suggestions to construct the kind of civil judicial hierarchy should be implement in our country. The consideration of lawsuit fairness and efficiency and the combination of principle and flexibility are the principles in reforming the civil judicial hierarchy in our country. The equalization point should be defined between lawsuit fairness and lawsuit efficiency to guard fairness to the maximum extent and reach high efficiency as much as possible. Setting up modern judicial hierarchy should adopt other types of judicial hierarchy system, but not rely only one single system. This thesis proposes three concrete proposals to construct the civil judicial hierarchy system in our country. First of all, four ranks and three-tier system with condition limited should be established, which means not every case has the opportunity to be tried by three different ranks of court and the case tried...