The Application Of The Principle Of Honesty And Credit In The Disclosure Of Government Information

The principle of good faith originated from the actio bona fide in Roman law.This principle ask people be honest and give judge the discretion of faith. With the development of the times, the principle of good faith can be applied in the field of public law. There are three reasons. First is because of the social members and between the administrative organs no longer as before is pure command and obedience, but mutual cooperation and contract relationship; second is because the principle of good faith guarantee the stability of government behavior and make the law stable; third is the principle of good faith is a general legal principle, which can meet the requirements of fairness and justice in the field of administrative law. In practice, many countries recognize the position of good faith principle in public law.There are three reasons for the principle of good faith as the basic principle of government information publicity. First, honesty and credit is the basic requirement of government legitimacy. Legitimacy is the foundation of the people's trust and recognition. To ensure the legitimacy of the government, the government should be in strict compliance with the principle of good faith during the disclosure of information.Second is the government information disclosure law aims to protect the right to know and supervise the exercise of power. The principle of good faith is observed,which is the precondition of realizing the right to know and the supervision of administrative power. Third is that government information disclosure is an important part of the government's building of rule by law and the building of rule by law requires the compliance with principle of good faith.There are four elements of the principle of good faith in civil and commercial law. They are good faith, abide by credit, honest and balance of interests. In the field of administrative law, the connotation of this principle has four points. They are good faith,or we can say sincerity; reality,that is what you say must be true; credit, that is trustworthy; and the lastis the balance of interests. The particularity of the government information disclosure is administrative, right oriented and real, which means the information exist really. Based on this, the principle of good faith in the government information disclosure requires the administrations do such things: first is to maintain an active and positive attitude to disclose the information; second is to ensure the authenticity of the information,third is to maintain consistency and stability, and strict abidance by the commitments; fourth is to pay attention to the balance of several interests, including the conflict between personal interests and the conflict between personal interests and social interests.The limitation of the principle of good faith is that a general principle, which is very vague and flexible, cannot be applied arbitrarily. In the disclosure of government information in addition to the principle of honesty and credit constraints inherent,there are two possible factors: first is that government have their own administrative tasks due to its limitations which make government not apply the principle of good faith; second is that when we take economic factor into account, the application of the principle of good faith maybe give not such a good result. Sometimes the loss outweighs the gain. So, it is better not to use the principle under these circumstances.At the legislative level,to confirm the principle of good faith in the information disclosure legislation, economic and technology are feasible. At present, the main task is to clearly define the principle of good faith in the law of information disclosure, and establish the authority of this principle. Since then, the principle of good faith can be further penetrated into the relevant laws and regulations of information disclosure. At the administrative level, this principle can be regarded as the flexible criteria of government information disclosure. We can search for the countermeasures when we faced with the conflict between right of privacy and the right to know. We can also give some proposals about the website construction,which used to disclose the government information. At the judicial level, the function we have realized of this principle in the judgment of government information disclosure is supplement and guidance.