Study Of Public Interest Litigation

With the continually speedy development of economy after the policy of reforming and opening-up being carried out, people's living and production have been becoming more and more socialized. As a result, some new- type social dissensions have been appearing one after the other, and serious civil or administrative cases involving infringing public interest have been occurring on and off, such as environment pollution, monopoly and the flow-away of public capital, etc. .However, due to the lag of litigation theory and legislation, public interest can not be well protected through litigation. With a view to breaking through this dilemma, China should establish and perfect the litigation system which is suitable for China, by reflecting on the status quo of public interest protection and by borrowing advanced theory and successful experience abroad.Centering on the theme of establishing litigation system suitable for China and using an integrated research methods—theory analysis, demonstration analysis, comparison analysis, etc., this article discusses how to establish litigation system with four parts. In its first part, in the hope of building a theory platform for the following discussion, the article first delimits the previous question of public interest litigation— what is public interest; then it sets forth the concept and characteristics of public interest litigation and the significance of establishing public interest litigation system in China. In its second part, the article mainly compares and analyzes parts of representative national public interest litigation system, and then reflects on the status quo of public interest protection so as to provide reference for the establishment and perfection of public interest litigation system. The last two parts are the pivots of the article, which analyze and expound respectively the application scope and suitors. The author of this article thinks the crux of establishing and perfecting the public interest litigation system suitable for China is: On the one hand, the application scope of public interest litigation system should be legally delimited. Environment protection suit, consumers' rights protection suit, anti-monopoly suit and the suit on the flow-away of public capital should be important components of future-established public interest litigation system. But it is inadvisable to bring the cases of the flow-away of profitable national capital with Chinese characteristics into theapplication scope of public interest litigation. On the other hand, subjects of right should be set down to represent and protect public interest. According to the situation of China and successful experience abroad, the subjects of public interest should be pluralized and can be classified as prosecutorial organizations, citizens and social organizations. Therefore, great efforts should be made to develop socialist democracy and legal system and to amend traditional litigation theory, and out-dated codices and statutes should be revised or abolished. Consequently, more enthusiastic citizens will take part in the protection of public interest so that we can draw on the wisdom of masses and gradually probe into establishing and perfecting the public interest litigation system suitable for China and develop it in practice.