The Research On China’s Administrative Interpretation And Its Application In Litigation

Researches on administrative interpretation have been limited in terms ofquantity. Moreover, most of the previous researches are exceedingly abstract andtheoretical whereas pay little attention to the practice. Some researchers analyzing theconception and features of administrative interpretation of legal sources intentionallyfrom the aspects of theories and criticizing practical matters, hoping to improve themdoes deserve avocation. However, most of them put their emphasis solely on theories,thus remain ignorant of the status which measures and norms of administrativeinterpretation are really in in practice. The others, although having noticed thepractical aspects, didn’t choose to systematically study what the role of administrativeinterpretation actually is in positive law or how its legal validity is defined inadministrative litigation.It is necessary to fully understand one thing from its very beginning and itsrelevant provisions in positive law at first if we are prepared to study one thingrelatively similar to some sort of legal sources, for we may be going exactly theopposite direction when giving improving opinions without proper, clear andsystematical knowledge of its concept, features, nature, types and its validity.The author carefully examined the birth of the norms and measures ofadministrative interpretation in China’s legal institution and how researchers defineand classify it when reading relevant sources and finally came up with one measure ofclassification which is closely connected with the original development of the veryconcept of administrative interpretation, namely the enactive interpretation andapplicative interpretation method. This kind of measure does not solely apply to thedistinction between legislative interpretation and other kinds of official interpretation,but also to the inner difference between various administrative interpretations. Withthis very basis, the author classifies all kinds of legal resources and the interpretativepower that their relative administrative agencies have, eventually figuring out thevalidities of administrative interpretations of different hierarchies. The key point of this article is that there is a kind of distinction between differentadministrative interpretations, which is defined by whether the interpreter is the veryagency that enacted the legal source being interpreted, and the enactive interpretations,which are made by the enactors, are generally higher in validity than applicativeinterpretations or unofficial interpretations made by agencies which are not theoriginal enactor of the legal source being interpreted. Therefor all kinds of officialadministrative interpretations could be dependent on the existing hierarchy of China’slegal sources, which could be eventually listed in detail.There are four parts in this article. The first part is focused on conception andideals by analyzing existing conceptions of administrative interpretation and statingwhat this article is meant to do. The second part is where the author tries to classifyprovisions about administrative interpretation in the existing constitutional law andother legal sources, and tries to figure out the inner logic of validity differencebetween various administrative interpretations as well as the relationship among theinterpreting agency, the legal source being interpreted and the interpretation beingmade. The third part is to figure out the status of administrative interpretations inChina’s administrative litigation, including the hierarchy of administrativeinterpretations and their application in administrative litigation. By combining thehierarchy made out after the second part and the criteria of legality and reasonabilityin provisions in the existing administrative litigation law, the third part provides apositive-law approach of defining whether a piece of administrative interpretationcould be applied in administrative litigation and tries to conclude often-used criteriathat could be possibly used in the future. And the fourth part is where the conclusionlies.