On Rationality & Legitimacy Of Applying Strict Responsibility To Environmental Crimes In Our Nation

Strict responsibility is a kind of criminal duty system particularly existing in the criminal laws of those English-American law family, formed with development of modern dangerous industry, introduced in the criminal law in the 19^th century, mainly applied in the crimes of damaging public welfare such as damaging environment and public security with high incidence of cases, strong profession and hard to prove the fault, which has imposed great charge on the traditional theory of criminal law. However, the scholars in the English and American countries have no agreed definition of strict responsibility with each other and have two absolutely different voices on whether there is a necessity of strict responsibility existing in the criminal law or not. Nevertheless, since it occurs, it has been applied in the judicial practice and has been gradually corrected and perfected. This essay has made a detailed introduction and analysis on strict responsibility system, illustrating the difference with absolute responsibility, pointing out that shifting burden of proof has become its important part, correcting the misunderstanding existed in the scholars in our nation.The essay starts from environmental crime involving in basic principles of environmental law, crime and its elements of constitution, analyzing the rationality of applying strict responsibility to environmental crimes. After listing relative regulations on strict responsibility provided in the environmental laws in UK, USA, Japan, Thailand, etc, the essay believes that the experience of using strict responsibility should be lessoned and absorbed with a discrimination in the current condition that the situation of environment is worse and worse and many environmental crimes have avoided legal penalty because there is no way to prove the objective offence. So in the environmental crimes, it should be practiced with fault responsibility principle as main principle, assisted with strict responsibility with strict definition of its applied scope and conditions.