On Environmental Public Interest Litigation Of Environmental Right's Protection System

Environmental right is a basic concept of environmental law. Studying the environmental right and path of its realization is of both theoretic and practical significance. This article puts forward a point of view that environmental public interest action is a major way to have the publics take part in the environmental management and to realize the environmental democracy. The writer holds that in order to realize the goal of environment justice China should reform his system of civil proceeds and administrative proceeds to erect a new frame of environment litigation by borrowing legislative and practical experiment from developed countries. The article probes the produce of environment right, the constitution of environment right and the nature of environment right, and defines a concept that is accepted by most of scholars, discuss the path realizing environment right, and points out that environment public interest litigation is a main way of realizing environment right. The writer holds it is a world trend to realize the environment right by jurisprudence process, and China should erect a system of environment public interest litigation as soon as possible to give a chance for any person, association and governmental body to bring suit of protecting environment public interest. The article also introduces the environment public interest action system of foreign countries, points that there is a great difference between the environment public interest action system of common law and that of continent law. The common law countries developed a concept of public interest by case law, while the system of continent law countries is confined by administrative action. The last part discusses the reason why our country should build a system of environment public action, the direction and paths of juridical reform, points out that to attain the aim of protecting the environment public interest, it is essential for us to reform the system of civil action and administrative action including standing of plaintiff, the model of initiate public interest action, burden of prove and mechanic of awarding.