A Study On The Judicial Review Of Administrative Interpretation Of Work Injury

Industrial injury issues are becoming increasingly significant. It is of great importance whether the rights and interests of the injured workers, who are commonly the disadvantaged group of the employment, can be effectively guaranteed when work-related accidents happen,. According to China’s current regulations on worker’s compensation insurance, an injured worker has to undergo industrial injury certification before he can receive industrial injury insurance treatment or industrial injury compensation. Though human resources and social security departments, being the specialized agencies of work-related injury certification, are highly experienced and professional in the decision of the certification, the related administrative departments still have to give specific interpretations to the certification because the insurance terms on actual situations of industrial injury certification are non-specific and there exist a lot of vague legal concepts. However, due to the variety of the interpretation-making bodies and the differences in the stringency of their approaches, the legitimacy of some of the interpretations remains to be examined. Furthermore, since these interpretations possess the power to influence the decisions of administrative departments in industrial injury certification, the departments are likely making unjust certification to injured workers with the provision of the illegitimate interpretations. Besides, owing to dramatic social transformation and changes in employments, whether to identify the given case as industrial injury or not is vital when special situations arise in the field of industrial injury certification. Nonetheless, the author has looked into cases published on Gazette of the Supreme People’s Court, Administrative Trial Guide Cases and Case Collection of People’s Court and found administrative departments are underperforming when giving interpretations to special situations, and are unable to safeguard injured workers’ interests. Industrial injury certification is the prerequisite for injured workers to obtain industrial injury insurance treatment. When a social security department gives a defective explanation, it closes the door for the worker to proper compensation. If there is no supervision mechanism, injured workers’ interests will not be effectively protected. However, courts don’t have steady attitudes and unified judicial review standards when inspecting administrative interpretations concerning industrial injuries, making the passage or veto of the interpretations baseless, which not only hurts injured workers’ rights and interests, but impairs the authority of judiciary as well. Therefore, it is of upmost importance to set steady attitude toward administrative interpretations in industrial injury certification cases and establish corresponding judicial review standards for it.This essay consists of three parts.Part 1 is to analyze the necessity and status quo of judicial review of administrative interpretations for industrial injury cases. First of all, the essay categorizes administrative interpretations into abstract interpretations and concrete interpretations to set foundation for further analysis of the problems stemming up from them. Then, the essay analyses the problems with formal literatures to reach the conclusion that the legitimacy of both abstract and concrete interpretations is questionable and cannot achieve the goal to protect injured workers lawfully by giving interpretations, thus judicial review is necessary for the interpretations. However, in China, the judicial review of abstract interpretations in industrial certification takes an inappropriate attitude and is malfunctioning for lack of review standards for concrete interpretations.Part 2 is to derive inspirations through examining judicial review of administrative interpretations of Taiwan and the US. the administrative regulations of administrative litigation review in Taiwan, which this part analyses its nature, attitudes, and differences between other formal literatures, provides some inspiration for our country. The administrative interpretations of the US arbitration award, on the other hand, applies to Skidmore Deference and determine the degree of deference by analyzing Skidmore elements in the specific case. Here the author chooses the case of United States v. Mead Corp to analyze the reason why this case applies to Skidmore Deference, then examines the elements of its consideration, finally discusses its inspirations to judicial review of concrete interpretations for industrial injury in our country.Part 3 is to give some suggestions on how to improve judicial review of administrative interpretations for industrial certification in China. First of all, put abstract administrative behavior into the realm of accessory review in next modification of Administrative Procedural Law, and set the right attitude of both respect and inspection: respect the expertise of administrative departments and put the disadvantaged status of injured workers into consideration as to hit a balance. Secondly, distinguish the forms of administrative interpretations. abstract interpretations should apply to legitimacy review while concrete interpretations to both reasonability and legitimacy. When a court rules out an improper concrete explanation, it should make clear the sequence of it, interpret its aim and meaning, then apply systematic interpretations and analogical interpretations properly to guarantee injured workers’ rights and interests.