Discussion On Offering A Reward For Testimony In Civil Proceeding

Civil procedure law of the people’s republic of china regulates that when trying a case the people court shall abide by fact and law. The purpose of this principle is to show that fact is the key to success of law proceedings. A process of a suit case is a proof to the fact. During this process, evidence is important. To some instant, litigation consists of obtaining evidence, adducing evidence, cross-examination and authenticating evidence. Thus, evidence is a key problem to a lawsuit. A lawsuit process is a process of evidence collection and usage, which is exactly as the words of Bentham, a British utilitarian jurist,"the evidence is the basis of Justice".The several stipulations of civil action evidence regulates that the person involved should provide evidence to support his/her claims or rebut a claim of the opponent in article2. The people involved should take responsibility of negative results caused by no evidence or lacking evidence to prove claims. The people involved should provide evidence according to the principle of "the burden of proving is on the party claiming". Nevertheless, evidence proving faces many obstacles. For one hand, the party claiming lacks ability to provide evidence; the rule does not provide security to the evidence proving activity; for the other hand, the witness will not to testify under the inherent defect of our system. Thus,"obtain evidence is hard" becoming a tough problem in our judicial practice. Under this intensive contradiction,"reward for evidence offering" appears. Nonetheless, different court has different rules towards fresh theory. After all, incompleteness of the exclusion rule of illegal evidence leads to judicial blank.For this reason, this thesis stands at controversial opinions on "the reward for testimony". It expands on series of "the reward for testimony" problems; it explores deep on the basis of existence of "the reward for testimony". This thesis stands on the analysis of legal validity of "the reward for testimony". It raises suggestions on legislative and judicial perfection of "the reward for testimony" issue through understanding the present situation of domestic civil law of "the reward for testimony" as well as the theoretical and practical situations of continental law system and Anglo-American law system.