On Legal Relief

Rule of law is a belief, and also a significant value, but it cannot be realized without trivial efforts to construct specific systems and procedures. If without rule of law in specific areas, the aflutter flag of rule of law would be nothing more than an empty slogan that could only shake the air. We possess of a systematic legal system, from constitutional law to administrative regulations. It is stipulated in our Constitution that "all the powers in People's Republic of China belong to the people," and "no organization or individual have any privilege over Constitution and other laws." It is also incorporated in our Constitution a series of citizens' rights and the principle of equity before the law. However, it is not difficult for us to find the gap between the law in reality and the law on the paper. What we lack is not "significant value", but "rule of law in specific areas."The legal relief system is a small but indispensable step toward "rule of law in specific areas."Nowadays China is experiencing the most important and difficult period during its transformation. There are so many underlying conflicts and problems in the society: the income gap is growing wider, the employment situation is serious, the public order in far from satisfying, the social psychology is changing drastically, the social structure is devoid of its middle class, and the rights enjoyed by different social groups are too imbalanced...The economic development has created disadvantaged group, advantaged group and privileged group, the imbalance among whom is severely challenging the stableness and the harmony of the society. People in the disadvantaged group are the ones that most need attention and help. Their rights are the most vulnerable, while the right remedies available for them are the scarcest. These people lack opportunity to express their demands on politics; they also lack economic ability to seek for right remedies. If no special help were provided, their rights would not be sufficiently protected and the disputes within this group would not be appropriately solved as well, all of which would be very possible to be the last straw to cause social unstableness. After all, the disadvantaged group's endurance is not unlimited.The legal relief system is a very helpful mechanism to ensure rightremedies and right protection for the disadvantaged groupThere are many things to do to perfect the legal relief system. As a cliche tells, "we should solve the problem from the root to the leaves." The basic conditions for the perfection of the system are the root while the specific contents of the system are the leaves. To perfect the "leaves" is what the Supreme Court is able to do and also, in fact, what it is just doing. How to meet the basic conditions, however, are beyond the Supreme Court's capability, while these conditions are indispensable if any substantial improvements of the legal relief system are to be achieved. Then what are these basic conditions? (1) The legal relief system should be prescribed in "Civil Procedure Law" instead of in judicial explanations; (2) The cost of the legal relief system should be bared by the country by means of budgetary appropriation rather than by the individual courts.As for the specific contents of the system, I think the following things should be done: (1) the application range of the system should be extended to the corporations and other entities to ensure their equal rights to sue; (2) the conditions of the application of the system should be specified in order to facilitate the courts' consideration in specific case as to whether to grant relief and which form of relief should be adopted; (3) The procedure to examine and approve the legal relief should be standardized to ensure that the relief be granted to the people who most needed it.