On The Legalization Of Apology

Chinese General Provisions of the Civil Law and the Tort Law have stipulated Apology as one method of bearing civil liability, which means, apology has completed a conversion from moral category to legal domain. In this circumstance, apology becomes a mandatory civil liability and has been endowed with special legal merits. However, this form of liability with Chinese characteristics has never been discussed in a broad and deep extent.In fact, apology not only reflects the common legal emotion of our people, but also being an excellent legal achievement of the original moral element. Meanwhile, according to the principle of proportionality, the infringer's freedom of speech is allowed to be restricted when the victim has been assaulted. Therefore, stipulating apology as one method of bearing legal liability has its validity and rationality.During the appliance, apology as one form of liability should embody its coercive force, publicity and emphasis the rationality of apology's content and presentation. Besides, out of the consideration of different rights or interests, apology should be flexibly applying to some specific cases.What's worth mentioning is the legal design of the effects for the apologies apart from litigation. In common law, for the sake of encouraging apology, legislators are used to set"safe harbor"to exclude the evidentiary effect of apology, however, there are still lots of disadvantages with those"safe harbor acts". With this regard, by applying cost-benefit method, this article assumes four possible legislative models and reaches a conclusion that the forth pattern is supposed to be the best to balance the interests between the infringers and victims.