The Contruction Of Antitrust Civil Procedural Mechanism

The antitrust law is regarded as Great Charter to the market economy ever since100years ago when the first antitrust law named Sherman act was enacted. Alongwith the increasing impacts of the monopolies to social and economic lives and thedifferent understandings and views towards the monopolies, it has generated variouspaths through which the regulatory enforcement on monopoly evolved and developedover different countries throughout different periods of development level in thesocial economy. However, the purpose always remains the same, which is tomaintenance the free and equal competition in market in the perspective of the macrolevel, while from specific levels is to restore the competition orders therefore therights and interests of consumers and operators can eventually be protected. Theobject of antitrust law can be categorized into public enforcement and privateenforcement. Although the public enforcement has contributed in many typical casesand becomes an important implementing force of the law， it is confronted withchallenges and limitations like limited resources. Therefore, drived by the strongdemands of self-protection on the interests, the private enforcement has paved its wayfor becoming another important method, by which the antitrust law shall beimplemented. As the monophonic units are usually high-powered, a single litigationwill have to face with some challenges including high costs and the lack ofmotivations. Further more, the difficulties when counter with the monopoly havetransformed the group litigation into a helpful remedy to overcome such difficulties.In the U.S., the existing of group litigation has successfully solved the modern civildispute that exists as the presence of “the majority of minimized amount”. Applicationof group litigation in the areas of antitrust has not only reduced the overall litigationcosts and social costs, but also played a key role in policy guidance because of itsnatural characteristics in expansion properties of judgment. For the reason concerned,group litigation was referenced as a designing model by different countries in antitrustlaw implementation systems. The representative litigations in China was enacted in 1991, when there was no matured legislation technologies and operability, it wasrarely applied in practice and failed to play its due role in the private litigationprocedures in antitrust law. By introducing the origins, historical evolutions of grouplitigation, combined with presentation of series issues and subsequent reforms appliedto the group litigations in the US, also draw some conclusions of experiences thatlearned from group litigation in the U.S by conducting various comparison with therepresentative litigations adopted in China, the present thesis aims to raise and putforward some corresponding opinions and suggestions to contribute in theconstruction of the group litigation system related to anti-monopoly law. The successof law transplantation requires not just some reasonable studies to the lawenvironment within the home country, but also need careful observations on whetherthis law can be matched up with the soil where it shall be transplanted in. It istherefore not difficult to imagine how hard this procedure will be. Therefore, it can besaid that transforming and reforms to the representative litigations is more practicalunder the current circumstances.