Research On Pretrial Conference In Civil Procedure

The civil 'action pretrial conference originated from the pretrial conference in the United States. As an important part of the pre-trial preparation procedure, the pretrial conference mainly refers to the court accepts the case before the formal hearing, the judge summons the parties to clear the indisputable points, collate evidence, in order to the court can focus on the real indisputable points. And in the pretrial conference,the judge will timely grasp the opportunity, prompts the parties accept the court mediation or voluntary settlement reconciliation, it can help the case end without trail.Although the civil law system such as Germany, Japan and Taiwan area in China,there's no name of the "pretrial conference",there is also a similar practice. They have established the flexible procedure of collating disputable points which have a similar fuction of pretrail conference. In our country, the civil action pretrial conference is the new content in the interpretation of the Supreme People's Court on the application of the Civil Procedure Law of the People's Republic of China which was introduced by the Supreme People's Court in 2015. There's no doubt that the introduction of the system will be extremely helpful to solve the problems commonly existing in judicial practice such as repeated trail,litigation raid etc. which affect judicial efficiency seriously that caused by insufficient preparation before trail. But we should also realize that due to the lack of overall design of legislation and more specific rules,although the judicial practice has carried out a lot of useful explorations,there are still have many problems to solve. In this background,this article puts forward some views and opinions to improve the pretrail conference in the future, and hopes to give a hand to the future reform.This paper is divided into four chapters.The first chapter mainly defines the basic meaning of the pretrial conference and its value and function. This article argues that in addition to the universal value of fair and justice, pretrial conference still have value of procedure protection and human rights safeguard. The functions of the pretrial conference are collating disputable points, evidence exchanging, spliting cases and reducing the pressure of trial function.At last, the article compares the difference between pretrial conference and pre-trial preparation procedure, as well as the difference between pretrial conference and trial procedure, and points out that although they have similarities but also have essential difference between them.The second chapter investigates pretrial conference of countries and regions outside the region. Introducing the specific operation of the pretrial conference in American which was origin of the pretrial conference, analysing the relationship between pretrial conference and pleading, as well as pretrial conference and discovery procedure. Then introduces the procedure of sorting out issues in the civil law system such as Germany,Japan and Taiwan area in China. At last,compares and summarizes the similarities and differences between the two law systems of the pretrial conference,and analyses its reference significance on perfecting our country's pretrial conference on this basis.The third chapter investigates the pretrial conference's present situation of legislation and judicature in our country. The article combs the legislative provisions on contents of the pretrial conference,and chooses four local regulations after the new revision of the Civil Procedure Law in 2012 and its judicial interpretation as buleprints, in order to investigate the operation condition of the pretrial conference in judicial practice, including the scope of the pretrial conference, and its starting procedure, the leader of the pretrial conference, as well as the evidence exchange, the means of collecting evidences of the parties. The article points out that the pretrial conference still have four problems at present: the fuction of collating disputable points and evidence is not prominent, lack of a relatively uniform applicable standard,the application is not satisfactory, and the relevant supporting system is not perfect.The fourth chapter puts forwards some suggestions in view of the present existing problems. The article argues that to improve the pretrial conference, we should define the property and function of the pretrial conference from legislation aspect, formulate a relatively uniform applicable standard, improve relevant supporting system of the pretrial conference and enhance the enthusiasm of judges to use the the pretrial conference in judicial practice.