A Distinction On The Boundary Between Extortion And Right Exertion

In recent years, there exists a phenomenon that behavior subjects alwaysthreaten the counter party or force them to do something in order to protect theirproperty rights no matter in consumption area, medical field or personal injurycompensation system. While the counter party usually fight those “victims” in courtbecause they are “threatened”. How should we determine the nature of “behaviorsubjects” who protect themselves by threatening others? This is called the criteria ofdifferentiating crime of extortion and exercising rights in the field of jurisprudence.How should we differentiate the two items? Up to now There hisn’t a criteriawhatever in judicial practice or legal theory.Additionally, more and more new problems appear recently. First, such kind ofdispute is closely related to consumption, medical treatment, personal injurycompensation and even democratic rights which is actually very rare in traditionalsituations. Secondly, the “behavior subjects” of extortion crime tend to be vulnerablegroups while the “extorted” party are usually strong in reality. For instance, in theextortion case of Hongkongite, the defendant are several citizens, but the accuser is atobacco monopoly bureau with administrative function. In the extortion case of MrMa, the defendant is a villager and the accuser is a county government who claimedhe had been blackmailed seriously. Thirdly, when the behavior subject exercise hisright, the scope of his right is always uncertain due to various reasons. Fourthly, thebehavior subject threatens to “tell the mass media or competent authorities” innormal conditions. Fifthly, the right behavior subject enjoys is sometimes obtained ininappropriate ways. Buying fake products on purpose is a classic one. Here, thebuyer expect the consequence and hopes it happens. Therefore, his subjectiveattitude is questionable. All of these state that it’s essentially important todifferentiate extortion crime and exercising rights.Based on such considerations, the author surmise the current situations of bothjudicial practice and law theory in differentiating extortion crime and exercising rights. Normally, judges give different judgments according to different details of acase. In other words, the legal nature of protecting themselves in threatening ways isstill not sure. What’s more, the author sums up some main opinions of domesticscholars. Although each of the opinion is reasonable in some degree, scholars justdevelop a correct attitude and don’t provide a criteria, let alone consider realisticsituations.The paper then illustrates foreign countries’ viewpoints and practice andthus summarizes the criteria of civil law countries and common law countries.Besides, in order to tell whether such alternative behavior constitutes a extortioncrime, the author annalizes the legislative purpose of extortion crime. By studyingextortion crime’s constitutive elements, including criminal object, subjectiveelements etc, the paper explains some exceptions of extortion crime. That is, somebehaviors seems like extortion behavior, but actually they are not the same. Finally,the paper annalizes some possible problems in reality, and evaluates them with aspecific criteria.It’s a great honor if the paper is useful to differentiate extortion crime andexercising rights.