The Predicament And Promotion Faced By The Environmental Public Interest Litigation

Environmental public interest litigation is a judicial system in which a lawsuit is brought by the indirect interest body when the environment public interests are violated.Its main purpose is that social organizations or statutory authorities representing the country exercise the right of action,in order to deal with the lack of protection in public interests.Although the scope of accepting cases and plaintiff qualification have been expanded,executors are willing to evade the process to some extent,because of the existing obstacles in the stages of prosecution and trial,such as the low level of cases and frequent rejection of putting on record.The reasons mainly exist in two sides.On the one hand,in the judicial practice,it’s hard for proper plaintiffs to exercise the right of action due to the difficulties of testification and lack of incentive system,as well as qualified social organizations.On the other hand,the current system of environmental public interest litigation system is still in the experimental stage.Courts are taking the risk of judicial application and evidence identification.This article focuses on empirical analysis on the application of environmental public interest litigation process,which holds the view that the system currently exists a double-barrier,namely,the obstacles to bring and hear cases.The perfection of the system,should focus on exercising of rights of action and the process of trial.To be detailed,the special ecological circuit court should be established,aiming to improve the professional degree of environmental trial mechanism by means of absorbing environmental experts as people’s assessors.At the same time,we could build a system which can reduce the risk of litigation,such as reducing the cost of litigation,establishing relevant public environmental welfare fund,and the cohesion between environment law enforcement and judicial mechanism,supporting the corresponding plaintiff.In this paper,the text could be divided into three chapters,the first chapter focus on showing social demand of environmental public interest litigation、the value of this system and current situation of application.Because of lacking effective counter measures in existing systems,it’s necessary to build environmental public interest litigation to remedy functional omission in administrative enforcement and private benefit lawsuit.But from the perspective of the status of public interest litigation,the growing trend of environmental disputes is not corresponding to the number of cases.On the one hand,the court still maintains a cautious attitude about public interest litigation.On the other hand,many prosecution obstacles inpractice make social organization indecisive.The second part mainly shows prosecution and trial obstacles in implementing of the environmental public interest litigation,and analyses the reasons.It take prosecution and trial mechanism as breakthrough points.The related problems are summarized as two aspects:(1)the prosecution obstacle: on the one hand,the complexity and various causes of environmental violation makes prosecutors face the difficulties of testification and the lack of knowledge.Moreover,the qualification of plaintiff is often failed to get the court approval;On the other hand,environmental welfare is shared by the public does not lead to the legal liability burden by private person,which leads to the crisis of collective action of public interest litigation.(2)trial obstacle: the use of a large number of scientific evidence in the trial is a test for the court,such as the judge’s ability to carry out the principle of the evidence in the process of legal application.At the same time,the tension between environment right and the right to development is likely to increase litigation risk for the judge and the court,which is hard to be predictedThe third chapter puts forward some advises on prosecuting obstacles and the judicial dilemma existing in the public welfare lawsuit system.This part mainly focuses its research angle on real demand in the implementation of the law.By means of establishing an incentive mechanism to decrease the difficulties of prosecution and foster professional trial institution as the center,we could further improve the system of public interest litigation system of trial and prosecution,prompting the practice of environmental public interest litigation system to coordinate with the legislative purpose.