Administrative Public Interest Litigation

With the increasing environmental pollution and ecological degradation, combined withthe citizens’ consciousness of environmental protection has been strengthened, the problemsexisting in the process of the administrative organs’ performing its duties of administrativesupervision and protecting the ecological environment have gradually been exposed, and thebehaviors of administrative organs’ violation of laws and dereliction of duties attract more andmore criticism from the society, as a result, more and more administrative litigations whichpurpose is to maintain a better ecological environment appear constantly. However, due to theunreasonable restrictions to the plaintiff qualification of the Administrative Procedure Law,namely only those who have legal interests with the accused administrative behavior havethe qualification to institute administrative litigation, the provisions of the scope of thecourt’s accepting cases is too close to meet the needs of the reality, namely theAdministrative Procedure Law only stipulate the actionable administrative behavior in theform of list, the absence of administrative public interest litigation system and many otherreasons, there are many problems of this type of case existing because of the lacking ofcorresponding theoretical support and clear specification operation, such as the acceptance ofthe court, trial, execution and so on. Leading to the direct consequences that such litigationsare often been shut out by the court for the reasons that the suitor can’t meet the plaintiffqualification regulated in the current Administrative Procedure Law or this type of casedoesn’t belong to the scope of the court’s accepting cases. Even if some courts made a boldattempt, breaking through the constraint of current legal provisions so as to adapt to the needsof the development of reality, incorporating this type of case into the scope of the judicialrelief, it may lead to unreasonable trial results if directly applicable to the current legalprovisions because of its particularity, and some problems may emerge because of lack ofspecific laws to apply, as a consequence, different courts may apply different standards in theprocess of trial and execution, which causes the situation of unreasonable and disunity inpractice. If this situation continues to exist, the illegal or inappropriate behaviors of theadministrative organs can’t be corrected timely, and it may unfortunately adding to the risk ofenvironment deteriorate further. Therefore, constructing a relatively perfect system ofenvironmental administrative public interest litigation to prevent and remedy the abovedefects has a profound practical significance. This article is divided into three parts:In the first part, as a breakthrough point, combining with some serious environmentalpollution incidents appearing in recent years, this part mean to drawn forth the problemsexisting in the process of the government’s regulation and protection of ecologicalenvironment, thus lead to the necessity of constructing the environmental administrativepublic interest litigation. On this basis, this part will introduce and analyze its basic theoriessuch as its concept, its basic feature, the value of its building and its theoretical basis.In the second part, the focus of the discussion is to analyze why this type of case can’t besolved properly in the current legal framework from the aspects of the plaintiff qualifications,the scope of the court’s accepting cases, local protectionism emphatically and so on. In otherwords, this part is attended to analyze the reasons why we need to break through the bound ofcurrent regulations in laws and build the system of the environmental administrative publicinterest litigation.The third part mainly aims at propose solutions to the problems existing in theconstructing process of environmental administrative public interest litigation mentioned inthe second part of this article, concluding the problems involved in the process of the court’saccepting and trial of this kind of litigation and the execution of its judgment, which are alsoattracting many academic disputes, such as which person should be awarded the plaintiffqualification, the prepositional procedure before the litigation, the court’s scope of acceptingcases, the jurisdiction and trial mode of the courts, the reconciliation of the two contrary partsand the plaintiff’s withdrawal of the suit during the process of the litigation. This part willanalyze the above questions in order to provide referable suggestions for the constructing ofthe environmental administrative public interest litigation.To sum up, this article tries to analyze and expound the urgency of constructing theenvironmental administrative public interest litigation system, the obstacles of constructingthis system, and how to break through and correct the current defective regulations of laws inorder to overcome the above the obstacles.Constructing the environmental administrative public interest litigation system can notonly broaden the methods of supervising the administration authorities to act according tothe laws, which is beneficial to achieve the goal of the rule of law, but also bring theprotection of environment into the judicial process formally，as a natural consequence, theprinciple of judicial final rule can be carried out actually，and environment rights and interests that stipulated in the Constitution and the related laws can be earnestlyimplemented.