A Clarification And Theoretical Construct Of The Environmental Contract

Contract plays a great role in adjusting the relation of law. It originated from the citizen society. The institution of contract was first established in Roman law to balance the equal intersubjective relation of law. As the society and economy develop, it appears to be a transition from the mechanism of free competition to that of national intervention. Accordingly, the pricinple of autonomy of will was restricted in some sense. Nowadays, the confluent trend is observed between civil law and environmental law. Especially, many basic pricinples and institutions of civil law can be inherited and absorbed by environmental law.In China, Prof. Zhongmei Lüis one of the pioneers in the area of environmental contract. Below we briefly survey a series of her research results. In the research of environmental contract, she focused on the development of contract institution, which is closely related to the individual purpose and the national purpose. In her opinion, the environmenta contract can be further classified to the environmenta assignment contract and the environmental consumption contract. In the content of the environmenta contract, she discussed the relation of subject and object, rights and obligations according to the frame of civil contract. Actually, all these are becoming a relative perfect system.This thesis is based on the civil and administrative character of the environmental contrac. We study both the civil contract and the administrative contract, though the former is central. Different from the literature, we first focus on the theory and the traditional environmental rights. We further definitude the scope and the content of the environmental rights according to the environmental contract. In the current theory of the environmental contract, the rights and obligations balanced by the contract is not clear, and there still exists arguments on the object. We extend the classification of the environmental constract from a new point of view. Finally, based on the classification, we believe that the environmental constract can really play great role in the enviromental problems only after further detailed discussion on the rights and obligations of the parties.