On Civil Illegal Evidence Exclusion

In order to win the civil lawsuit, the parties will try all means to collect evidences which are vital for discovering the case facts. But because of the shortage of legal awareness or the drive of interests, the parties will sometimes infringe others' legal interests or violate the laws. The rule of illegal evidence exclusion is made just for controlling this social phenomenon and regulating the parties' evidence-collecting actions.On 3^rd June 1995, the Supreme People's Court made a judicial reply on talk recordings for the Higher People's Court of Hebei Province, and on 21^st December 2001, the Supreme People's Court made provisions on civil litigation evidences, preliminarily setting up the rule of illegal evidence exclusion in China, but this rule employs vague concepts with a too strict exclusion mode and short of systematic exclusion procedures, going too far away from the judicial practices to some extent. On the base of summarizing judicial practices at home and referring to relevant experiences abroad, we should reset an exclusion rule with a standard of serious violation and some exceptions, giving judges discerning power; as to exclusion procedures, we should set up such systems as objection of evidence legacy, proof burden of illegal evidence, proof standard of illegal evidence; besides, the judicial relief system of illegal evidence exclusion is drafted and some future legislative suggestions are proposed.