On Civil Mediation System And Its Remodeling

Based on the consideration of the defects of modern litigation system and reflection of the effects affiliated by traditional Chinese legal culture and the need of the public for multi-element mediation practices to civil disputes, the paper tries to explore both the theoretical and practical problems existing with the current mediation practices via viewpoints of legal culture and modernization of the legal system, in a bid to make clear basic issues thereto.Theoretical research on the civil mediation in China experienced its high early in the 1980s-1990s. With the concept of rule of law officially adopted in late 1990s, most scholars shifted their efforts to judicial reform the core of which is court reform, which rendered various homegrown practices not fully explored. The only study related to civil mediation is the research made by the scholars represented by Zhang Jinfan, Zhang Zhongqiu and Huang Zongzhi and so on from the angle of view of the culture of law, and the scholars, such as Zhu Suli, Fan Yu, Tian Youcheng etc. who pay close attention to the problem of "nationalization of the rule of law". Time has proved that wrongful idea of "mightful litigation" bearing strings of defects and a bunch of Chinese scholars therefore returned to cast lights on further recognition of the rule and value of civil mediation, which is a major part of traditional Chinese legal culture. The writings named "mediation, the rule of law and modernization: the research of Chinese mediation system", which was edited by Jiang Shigong, can be looked as the deepest study on this field until now. But it only laid particular emphasis on the history and didn't explore from the source the basic features and the reasons of rise and fall of civil mediation system and put constructively forward the train of thought of the rebuilding of the system. Other scholars didn't solve the problems to our satisfaction too. I will make up the omission by this paper.In comparison with studies done by others, the paper made some new finds: explore the reasons for the ups and downs of the civil mediation system by the angle of economy, set community autonomy as the base for the retooling of the system and put forth some principles to be adhered during studies.The paper is divided into three parts according to its inner logistic.Part one: definition, features and history of civil mediation practices.Part two: analyze economy related reasons for the rise and fall of civil mediation in the history.Part three: put forward viewpoints regarding the retooling of civil mediation practices in aspects of necessity, principles and development trends. This part is the core of the paper.