The Concept Of Legal Fact

As a representative of Pandekten Jurisprudence of Germany, Savigny thinks that dynamic operation of legal relationship as the most important content of legal effect in private law requires two elements. The first element is special legal rule and the second one is specific living fact consistent with hypothesis of legal rules. As the bridge between abstract legal rules and specific legal relationship, legal fact is proposed as an independent private law concept. Savigny has taken the lead in explaining legal fact as a mature theory,"I refer to an event initiating and ending legal relationship as legal fact. All legal facts are common in that they will make relationship between specific persons somewhat change as time goes." Main opinions of Pandekten Jurisprudence of Germany have been inherited in traditional legal theories of China. In traditional legal theories of China, legal fact is almost invariably defined as "phenomenon provided by law which can cause establishment, change and termination of legal relationship".Juridical methods shall guide judicial practices and protection of rights. In this sense, there are defects in form, representation and subject matter standards adopted by traditional theories in defining legal fact. As for form standard, legal rule is adopted as precondition, which deliberately reduces the scope of subject matter of legal facts and poses the risk of refusing protection of rights. External representation standard neglects the fact that legal facts are not prerequisite for causing establishment, change and termination of legal relationship and misunderstands "causing establishment, change and termination of legal relationship" as essential attributes of legal facts. Nevertheless, subject matter standard complicatedly includes natural phenomenon not related to life of the humankind society, which deliberately enlarges scope of subject matters of legal facts.Derivation relationship exists between life facts and legal facts. We treat life facts as subject matter source and gathering scope of legal facts and choose to look for required standard of defining legal facts by proceeding from definition of life facts and the logical relationship between life facts and legal facts. In terms of form, we select legal norms including legal rules, principles and habits as form standard defining the concept of legal facts for the purposes of properly dividing space inside law and space outside law and giving due consideration to formal justice and substantive justice, general justice and individual justice in judicial practices. In terms of substance, we select right protection appeal as substantive standard defining concept of legal facts because the concept of legal facts has been initially established to maintain legitimate and just rights. In terms of procedure, the truth of legal facts shall be represented to the greatest extent and the life facts at issue shall undergo inspection of "the highest cognitive level". Therefore, we select litigation procedure as procedural standard defining concept of legal facts. In terms of subject, we select joint participation by multiple litigation subjects and final determination by the judge as the subject standard defining concept of legal facts so that facts having occurred in the past outside the court are reasonably reproduced in the court.According to new required standard, the redefined legal facts also have brand new elements, inherent characteristics and classifying methods. Redefined legal facts also consist of five main elements, namely, time and space, subject and object, right, evidence and legal relationship. They have such inherent characteristics as right claim, conformance to norms, specificity, connectivity, integrity, authoritativeness and finality. Legal facts can be classified in different manners according to different right claims, different sources of right effect and existence of the counterparty subject. The process for the judge to determine facts is the process in which multiple subjects participate within the legal procedural space regulated by norms of litigation law and evidence rules and which is completed by alternating between abstractness and specificity and finally becoming specific. This process can be roughly described as such:specificity (life facts)-abstractness (constitution of facts)-specificity (constitution of facts)-specificity (legal facts)-abstractness (legal, relationship in sense of norm)-specificity (legal relationship in sense of facts). On the whole, this process is the integration of "determination of facts" and "application of law" often referred to by people.From the perspective of development, we make use of the advantages and bypass the disadvantages and understand concept of legal facts again. This is significant in theory and practice at least in the following three aspects. First, it helps deepen knowledge of essential attributes of law. Secondly, it helps restate essential meaning of legal certainty. Thirdly, it helps improve statutes.