Some Thoughts On The System Of Public Benefit Litigation In China

Public benefit litigation is a form of litigation occurred in 1960s with the purpose of social public benefit. It has the function of damage prevention, public remedy on damaged national interests, social public interests and avoiding repeated litigation brought by multiple invaded individuals. It can also supervise the civil action of authority (including but not limit to the administrative institution), promote the public policy formulation, which is greatly helpful to the protection of social public interests and the legal right of weak group of the society. China is a developing country lacking of deep democratic tradition and strong economic foundation. In the process of implementing administration according to law and establishment of a socialist market economy, owing to the effect of power orientation or the existing incomplete laws and regulations, it is usual to see the fact that the public benefit is damaged. But the procedural law requires that only the directly interested party can institute to the court, therefore a lot of cases suffered public benefit damage can not get effective remedy. Fortunately, many people of insight have noticed such situation; they institute many lawsuits with feature of public benefit according to the situation that the public benefit is damaged in society. But we also notice that so far the majority of cases on public benefit have ended up against the plaintiff. In fact, a lot of lawsuits of public benefit, except for a few of individual lawsuit of public benefit protection that won victory, most lawsuits especially that with the defendant of department with public right and authority department end up with failure, which made the public benefit lawsuit in our country under an awkward position. The following reasons are involved: legislation deficiency in public benefit lawsuit, universal judgment of lawsuit, insufficient staff engaged in public, and the public's low trust in justice. This article tried to discuss the method we should take in public benefit lawsuit in the respect of the conception of public benefit lawsuit, effect, scope of application, factors restricted the development of public benefit lawsuit in our country, such as enlarging the scope of plaintiff of public benefit lawsuit, the expenses favored the plaintiff, appropriately playing the subjective initiative of the court and establishment of the stimulation mechanism, so as to put forward opinions on the process of promoting the system of public benefit litigation in China .