On The Principle Of Strict Liability Applicable Environmental Crime

With a strong economical growth and industrialization, our living environment, which we have been long relying on, was seriously polluted and damaged. Environmental crime could potentially pose an enormous damage on our society. Environmental crime is unique, versatile and hideous, this creates various difficulties in proving a criminal defendant' s intentional or accidental faults. The basic liability rule used in our criminal law is fault liability rule which means that a defendant would be convicted to be guilty of a crime only if there is evidence available to prove his intentional or accidental faults. With no exception this rule should also be applied in the environmental criminal lawsuit. However, the basic liability rule in our criminal law seems not very effective in crime prosecution while it is applied in the environmental criminal lawsuit because of the crime' s complexity and uniqueness. Compared to other laws, criminal law is much stricter and more forceful. In the environmental crime legal practice, sometimes it becomes very difficult to prove a defendant' s intentional or accidental faults because of the crime' s complex fact and a lack of strong evidence. Our criminal law insists that we apply a fault liability rule to prove a defendant' s an intentional or accidental fault and then the defendant could be indicted and liable for criminal penalty. This brings difficulty in prosecuting some environmental crimes only because of a lack of strong evidence even though these crimes were actually committed. Therefore some large scale environmental crimes could not be effectively penalized and this would not be good for the crime prevention and punishment. It is discussed in this article that a strict liability rule should be applied in the environmental lawsuit so that the crimes could be successfully prosecuted and penalized and our environment could be well protected.The strict liability rule was first defined and applied in civil lawsuit. The modern criminal law theory emphasizes a proof of fault toconvict a crime. Under this theory a criminal fact is used as a basis to convict a crime. If there is no criminal fact then the defendant will not be prosecuted. With the economical growth and industrialization, some crimes resulting in high damages on our society have surfaced. Moreover some crimes are so hideous that they could not be easily identified and investigated thoroughly. Especially for the environmental crime, the fault liability rule centered on a strong proof of fault to indict a crime has received challenges in the environmental criminal lawsuit. However the strict liability rule is a breakthrough for the criminal law theory in that it is not only developed from the modern criminal law theory but also resulted from the social and economical development. The criminal strict liability rule was established based upon both social protection theory and damage prevention possibility theory. The purpose is to increase people' s social responsibility acting for the goodness of our society so as to reduce crimes and protect people' s safety and health. There are fierce arguments in the legal academics about whether the strict liability rule should be applied in the criminal lawsuits. Most scholars believe that the rule should not be applied because the application doesn' t follow the basic liability rule in our criminal law such that a proof of default is a determinant of a crime. As a matter of fact, these scholars might be confused between the concepts of no fault liability rule and strict liability rule. The distinguish between the concepts of no fault liability rule and strict liability rule is that in the application of no fault liability rule, a suspect or a defendant has no opportunity of presenting his argument for his no fault. While in applying the strict liability rule, a suspect or a defendant is allowed to present evidence to prove his no fault in the criminal lawsuit. It is also proposed in this article on how to apply the liability rule properly in the environmental criminal lawsuit. First we need to refine provisions on the environmental criminal law. In the provisions of environmentalcriminal law we need to include that the basic liability rule should be applied on most cases, while for some special cases the strict liability shall be applied. In the criminal law we need to specify that " strict liability rule should be applied as specified" so that the strict liability rule can be established as one of the basic rules in the criminal law. In the legislation, the fault liability rule shall be applied by using a generalization approach, while the strict liability rule shall be applied by using an exemplification approach. According to the basics of the strict liability rule, some new sections such as reverse evidence presentation responsibilty should also be added in the criminal law. In addition, it is also discussed in this paper that there are some limitations on applying the strict liability rule in the environmental crime. It should be applied based upon specifications in the criminal law on some crimes such as environment pollution crime, environmental crime which results in serious damage on environmental resources, environmental crime which are committed by a group of people and environmental crime which shall be vigorously penalized if the strict liability rule is applied. Finally the paper also discussed some non-liability situations in applying the strict liability rule in the environmental crime. The non-liability situations could arise due to objective condition (environmental crime criminal liability ability and defendant' .s criminal liability age) and subjective condition (based upon strict liability rule, if a defendant or a suspect could provide evidence to prove that he has been responsible and taken enough precautions but still commited the environment pollution due to some other nonintentional reasons such as protecting himself, preventing some disaster, obtaining a promise from a victim for permission and etc., he would not be liable for a ]egal consequence).