| Legal aid is a kind of judicial aid system that the state offers legal help to the citizens who are incapable to pay part or all of the legal service costs because of economic hardship by reducing or exempting costs in order to guarantee them to realize their rights and interests endowed by the laws. The legal aid system is the inevitable outcome of human's legal civilization and legal culture when they develop to certain stage. The paper begins with the legal attributes and origin of the legal aid system, elaborates the theoretic basis of legal aid, analyzes the introduction and development of legal aid system and the existing main problems in China, and explores the effective ways and specific measures of perfecting the legal aid system of our country.In the first part of the paper, the author carries out general theoretic analysis on legal aid system. The basic characteristics of legal aid system can be summarized as State's Responsibility, Government's Obligation, Society's Participation and Professional Aid. The legal aid system originated from Great Britain. Through several hundred years' development, many Western countries have established relatively complete legal aid system, and the legal aid has become concept of government's responsibility from the concept of morality and justice. Legal aid system has become the needs of guaranteeing human rights, keeping balance of litigious right and maintaining judicial fairness and social stability.In the second part of the paper, the author introduces the current situations and problems of Chinese legal aid system. From the 90s of last century, the framework of legal aid system of our country has taken shape though a dozen year's development, and the principles of Government's Responsibility, Uniform Management, Lawyer's Obligation and Free Service have been defined in the legal aid work. However, there're obvious problems in the legal aid system of our country, for example, the structure of legal aid system is not complete; the lawmaking system of legal aid hasn't been shaped; the setup of legal aid agents is not reasonable; the gap between the availability of legal aid and social demands is great; the expenditures of legal aid are in short; the supervision system on quality of cases of legal aid hasn't been established, etc. It is necessary for our country to perfect legal aid system in order to respect and guarantee human rights, implement human-centered concept, deepen judicial system reform and perform international obligations.In the third part of the paper, the author discusses the ways of perfecting the legal aid system of our country. Firstly, the lawmaking system of legal aid shall be perfected. The legal aid system shall be defined as a basic legal system in the Constitution, and it shall be confirmed that the legal aid is the citizens' rights and the state's responsibility. The Law on Legal Aid formulated by the highest lawmaking organ of the state shall be released as soon as possible, and the laws and regulations involving legal aid shall be amended. Secondly, the legal aid management and implementation organs shall be perfected. The governmental shall serve as primary force to provide legal aid, and the civil participation shall be the supplementation. The government's functions of legal aid shall be strengthened and the powers of all circles of the society shall be brought into play. Thirdly, the scope of legal aid shall be expanded. The channels for application of legal aid shall be expanded and on-duty lawyer system shall be established in key organs. The legal aid, which is mainly provided in trial stage, shall be extended to the stages of investigation, inspection and prosecution. Besides the criminal suspects and the defendants, the emphasis of criminal legal aid shall be placed on the injured party. Proper standard of economic hardship shall be formulated, and the scope of civil and administrative legal aid shall be broadened. Fourthly, the expenditure security system with government's financial investment as primary role and social donation as supplementary role shall be established. In the financial budget in all levels from the central government to the local government, the special fund for legal aid shall be listed separately, and the central financial authority shall increase the payment of financial transference to the economic underdeveloped regions. Furthermore, the social donation and accumulative legal aid fund system shall be established. Fifthly, the legal aid quality supervision system and appraisal system shall be established. For the civil and administrative legal aid, the actual contents of the cases shall be inspected based on the form inspection, in order to ensure if it is possible to realize the rights and interests through litigation. The entry system for lawyers to handle legal aid cases shall be established, and the standard for allowance of case process shall be enhanced. The quality of case handled shall be appraised with grades; the case quality shall be notified and will be recorded into the credit archives of the lawyers. |
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