Research On Letters And Visits’ Present Situation And Its "Rule Of Law" Process

As a special means for Chinese citizens’ aspiration expression, political participation and disputeresolution, the system of letters and visits is of long history, profound social foundation and generalconsciousness basis. The practice shows that this system plays an important role in dissolving socialcontradiction and stabilizing social order. With the formulation and establishment of the socialistconcept of rule of law, rule of law has been a premise of political reforms as well as other institutionalreform. The legal constructions like legality building, procedure construction, supervisionaggrandizement and right protection are gradually developed.However, due to the defects of the procedural provisions, when departments for letters and visitsaccept or handle the letter-or-visit matters, they are disturbed by too many human factors. Besides, theinsufficiency of external supervision increases the arbitrariness of letters and visits. As a result, thesystem of letters and visits showing the “rule of man” characteristic is opposed to our country’s “ruleof law” process. It has gradually been in a sidelined status, and some scholars even propose the cancelof this system. Therefore, the author chooses the system of letters and visits as the subject of thispaper, elaborating it from the view of rule of law. This paper analyzes this system’s problems as wellas the reasons, and it references other countries or areas’ similar systems and absorbs domesticscholars’ theoretical achievements, with which it finally draws a conclusion that the letter-or-visitsystem should be retained and improved.This paper is composed of five parts. The first part is the introduction, which mainly introducesthe research background, the research contents, the research status at home and abroad and theresearch purpose. The second part is the summary of the letter-or-visit system, whichcomprehensively introduces this system’s concept, characteristics, historical development, functionsand current legislation situation. The third part is about the problems and reasons of this system. Thefourth part is about the reform orientation of this system, which detailedly introduces other countriesor areas’ aspiration expression systems as well as domestic scholars’ viewpoints on letter-or-visitsystem reform. The fifth part is about the concrete measures to achieve the rule of law in letter-or-visitsystem. The paper puts forward three suggestions, which are about the promulgation of Law of Lettersand Visits, the improvement of other dispute settlement systems and the establishment of NPC’scitizen aspiration investigation committee.