Research On Substantive Due Process

The main content of this paper is substantive due process and its specific use in Chinese public utilities regulation. Due to the concept of substantive due process came from the idea of Legal System of US and Britain which is famous for their trial cases, in this paper we attempt to introduce substantive due process coming from US and Britain to China’s current legal system in the perspective of price controls of public utilities in order to change the idea that people attaches importance to entities instead of processes and the perspective that due process is emphasized one-sidely in China. In this paper, we will also discuss the importance of substantive due process in practice and bring principles of substantive due process into activities of price controls of public utilities in order to solve problems exist from price controls of public utilities in China.The reason why the legislation concerning price controls of public utilities in China face difficulties is lack of substantive due process. Optimization of legislation activities of price controls of public utilities can not be achieved without reference to principles of substantive due process. According to substantive due process, principled regulations such as preventing public power from inappropriate use and monopoly, introduction of free competition mechanism and guaranteeing freedom of contract are the basis of maintaining legislation activities of controls of public utilities. The fundamental way to solve problems of due process in legislation of controls of public utilities is to improve the openness of legislation using unconstitutional censorship mechanism in practice, at the same time unswervingly sticking to the basic principle of substantive due process, in order to make the stakeholders get an effect of balance, to give full play to the independent roll of regulatory agencies and consumer organizations. That if we only adhere to the principles of due process in the perspective of social environment without the basic line of the principles of substantive due process, can not solve the problems from the root and this can explain the importance of substantive due process.The legislative activities of price controls of public utilities in China now restrictions on freedom of economic competition is very in strict. The whole public utilities in China monopoly by state-owned enterprises, no economic market competition opening up nor checks and balances game of stakeholders, If we proceed like this, the interests of consumers would cause serious damage,state-owned enterprises continue to rely on government authority to relax restrictions on freedom, leading to highly profitable except that the low efficiency of production and operation, ultimately against the rights of the public and consumer interests. If we want to contain the source of current situation of monopoly state-owned enterprises, reference substantive due process is the best choice. Through the improvement of the constitution supervision system, establish an independent regulatory agencies, enhance the active participation of consumer organizations, weaken the power of public authority controls, make the price controls of public utilities in China reforms a step forward, achieve the price controls of public utilities of a virtuous circle.