The Legal Liability Of The Government In The Air Pollution Supervision

With years of stable and sustainable growth of China’s economy, theurbanization level, modernization level and standard of living of China’s citizensimprove continuously. Meanwhile, the air environment pollution is more and moreserious, and the conflict between the air pollution status and requirement of citizensfor clean air and quality environment is increasingly prominent, so the society paysmore attention to the air environment quality. Improving the air environment qualityand increasing the effectiveness of air pollution control have become important issuesin front of the government and citizens.The improvement of the executive ability of government in the supervision of airpollution is the key to solving the problem. China’s air pollution has entered thecompound phase. The compositions of air pollutants are complex, and the pollutioneffects have the accumulated lagging nature and regional mobility, which needs theintervention of the public power of government to play its role of co-ordination andregulate the air pollution. However, in practice, the supervision of government isfailed, which did not improve the efficiency of air pollution control, instead, indulgeand even aggravate the air pollution. This is because the legal liability of thegovernment is in the absence in the air pollution supervision, and it is difficult to playthe constraint and guide function of the law, leading to the lack of supervision on theregulatory anomie of the government. Therefore, in this paper, the reason of thegovernment’s regulatory failure is defined through the analysis on the governmentlegal liability in the air pollution supervision, and some measures for theimprovement of the government legal liability specific to the existing problems areput forward, hoping to make a useful exploration to the enhancement of government’sexecutive ability in air pollution supervision and promote the effective improvementof air environment quality.In this paper, the economics analysis is implemented combined with theenvironmental public goods theory and market negative externality principle, and it’s considered that the public goods attribute of environment and the inefficiency ofmarket mechanism of environmental area is right the point where we need tointroduce the governmental responsibilities in the air pollution supervision; thejurisprudence analysis is carried out for the government legal liability in thesupervision of air pollution combined with the citizen’s environment right theory&public environmental benefit theory, public trust theory&the government’s trusteeduties, and social contract theory&responsible government theory, so as to reveal thelegitimacy of the government in shouldering corresponding legal liability in the airpollution supervision.In this paper, through the analysis on the status of legal liability of thegovernment in the air pollution supervision, three aspects of the presentation ofcurrent absence of government legal liability are proposed, including the difficultdistinguishing of subject of supervision responsibility, the not comprehensive form oflegal liability and the inadequate judicial accountability mechanism, and on the basisof the analysis on the problem, how to improve the legal liability of the governmentin the air pollution supervision is thought deeply by the comparative study method.And some concrete ideas are put forward. The first is to distinguish the subject ofsupervision responsibility for the air pollution among various government ministriesand intergovernmental levels and define the subject of supervision responsibility ofthe regional air pollution; the second is to explicitly stipulate the legal liability of thegovernment to form a comprehensive form of government legal liability; the third isto improve the judicial accountability of the government legal liability, and ensure theachievement of the government legal liability through special environmental litigationsystem and environmental public interest litigation system.