Study On Judicial Review Of Normative Document

The normative documents in the narrow sense refer to the binding decisions and orders issued by the governments and their departments. Whether from legal principle or in practice, the normative document shall not be treated as formal source of law, so the judicial review of normative documents is determined by development of the rule of law. The legal basis of the judicial review of normative documents includes the theory of power restriction, the last line defense theory, the theory of respecting right of the administrative authorities and the human rights protection theory. The development of judicial review of normative documents in China include three stages: complete exclusion, continuous grope and the establishment of incidental review by revise of Administrative Procedure Law. There are problems in the existing judicial review system: uncertain review subject, narrowing review scope, undefined review standard and incomplete review result. Those problems relate to power distribution, restraint from judicial power itself and need to return to administrative power to develop normative documents. This paper puts forward some constructive suggestions for the improvement of judicial review system, namely, set across-administrative courts as review subject; expand the interpretation of review scope appropriately; establish multiple and particular review standard; get rid of the limitations of review result; guarantee the development of judicial review with judicial independence and multi-route supervision.