Research On The Civil Public Interest Litigation

With the continuous development of China’s social economy, people’s living standards has also beensignificantly improved. Many social problems are emerged in the meanwhile, such as environmentalpollution, loss of state assets, protection of consumers’ interests. The above problems’ representationfocuses on damaging the social and public interests. In addition, plenty of civil proceedings aimed atsafeguarding the public interest have appeared in judicial practice. Meanwhile, the newly revised CivilProcedure Law explicitly defined the new concept of public interest litigation at legislative level for thefirst time. However, those are still in the fledgling stage, has not yet formed a comprehensive and completelitigation system. Therefore, that cannot play a truly effective role.At present, domestic study of Civil Public Interest Litigation are mostly theoretical construction. Afterthe implementation of the New Civil Procedure Law, the question of how to apply laws under the existinglegal framework and judicial practice was placed in the front. The community’s focus towards Civil PublicInterest Litigation has transferred from theoretical construction to solving practical problems encountered.In view of this, the paper starts from program by proposing certain self-owned views and opinions towardsthe construction of operable system, hoping to do some favor for civil public interest litigation system asapplied in judicial practice accurately and reasonably.This paper is divided into five parts:The first part illustrates the legislative purpose and function of Civil Public Interest Litigation.Through analyzing the purpose and function, it can be obtained that civil public interest litigation is quitedifferent from traditional civil litigation in many aspects, such as litigation purposes, litigation subject,litigation effect, judgment validity and etc. Such has laid the foundation for interpreting and applying of theprovisions of Article55more objectively and accurately. The second part illustrates the scope of Civil Public Interest Litigation in China. The scope of CivilPublic Interest Litigation are inseparable from "public interest", therefore, this part proposes self-ownedviews towards the definition of public interest, which is in dispute. The paper considers that public interestis the valuable benefit being recognized by the mass in a larger range or a certain area, it has the characterof universality, integrity, uncertainty and motionality, changing with the development of times and socialchanges. At the same time, the explanations of "other scope of application" stipulated by Article55areprovided on this basis.The third part comprehensively analyzes the arisement of civil public interest litigation on the basis ofdomestic existing theory and judicial practice experience, stressing relevant laws and regulations, the mainpart of civil public interest litigation, specific content of the claim, the jurisdiction, statute of limitationsand so on. And on this basis, the paper preliminarily discusses the limit of the main qualifications of publicinterest litigation, the division of jurisdiction, the calculation of statute limitations and etc.The fourth part discusses the civil public interest litigation hearing, including allocation of proofburden, establishment of proving standards, sharing of litigation costs, whether using mediation andcounterclaims, and etc. Such clarifies the difference from traditional civil litigation, meanwile, it proposesself-owned views and opinions on the basis of learning from the advanced experience of foreign countries.The fifth part thoroughly analyzes the judgment consequences of civil public interest litigation fromtwo aspects, the expansion of judgment effect and the distribution of benefits from wining the lawsuit. Theexpansion of judgment effect contributes to establishing the authority of law, judicial economy; whilereasonable allocation of benefits from winning the lawsuit could motivate the public to make public interestlitigation, thereby safeguarding the public interest earnestly.