Witnesses

The fact that witnesses don't want to appear in court to testify is always the prominent problem which has affected our country civil action potency and also a theoretical hot-spot for improving Civil Procedural Law in China. This thesis mainly discusses why the witnesses should appear in court and why they refuse to do so as well as how to persuade them to testify in court, aiming at finding the reasons for witnesses's unwillingness to appear in court and the solution to this difficult problem.Focusing on the witnesses' appearance system, this article evaluates the two law systems through a comparative study and analyses the problems and the reasons concerning the witnesses' appearance in court in our civil litigation. It proposes a basic conception on how to improve our country's witnesses' appearance system, which is based on China's actual situation and considers the judicial practice achievement and the mature experience of overseas legislative researches.This paper can be divided into three parts. The author tries to explain the necessity of the witnesses' appearance in its first part . From the depth of theory of law, this paper discusses the legal importance of witnesses' testimony to the cases, and it illustrates the positive sense of witnesses' oral testimony in court through a comparison between oral testimony and written testimony's potency difference. Based on this, the author adopts the comparative method and provides many typical practices and their actual results with regard to the witnesses' appearance system in other countries so as to support the viewpoint of the article.The second part attempts to seek a reasonable explanation of the witnesses' unwillingness to appear in court. First it analyses the present realistic situation of witnesses' appearance in our country's civil action on the basis of the related literature materials . Then it summaries four reasons for the witnesses' unwillingness to appear in court from different angles, expecting to solve the problem properly and effectively.The third part is designed to find the solution to the problem on how to persuade witnesses to appear in court, which is also the key part of this article. Through the analysis and induction of the first two parts , it probes into establishing a security system structure which will safeguard witnesses who appear in court to testify in the civil action. Besides, having considered the definition of witness , exceptional situation of witnesses' appearance and their rights security as well as raising the witnesses' awareness of appearing in court to testify or compelling them to do so , it gives a more detailed elaboration on improving the witnesses' appearance system in China's civil actions. By means of the concrete system design, it expects to strengthen the orderliness of witnesses' appearance process and the system's feasibility, hoping that the article can make a small valuable contribution to the further improvement of our country's witnesses' appearance in court system in civil actions.