Research On The Pre-trial Conference System In Civil Litigation

In 2015, our "Interpretation of Civil Procedural Law" formally established the system of Pretrial Conference. The so-called pretrial conference is a meeting, after the case being accepted and before the trial formally beginning, in which the court convened the parties to negotiate items, such as the focus of dispute, evidences those the two sides are prepared to put in the court, and other matters which are conducive to promoting the procedure of formal trial. The pretrial conference and the pretrial preparation procedure are consistent on the goal of ensuring the formal trial continuous and successive. But from the point of their extensions, the pretrial preparation procedure is the bigger concept, containing the denotation of pretrial conference. Although the pretrial conference was described as a conference, but from the legislation of civil law countries and the traditional practices of our country, we should deal with the "meeting" extended explanations, namely the forms of pretrial conference include not only conference but also court hearing. In civil litigation of China, the pretrial conference system is gradually established in the continuous exploration of judicial practice and theory, its functions are not only clearing and fixing point of contention and evidence to prepare for trial, but also promotion of mediation to the end the litigation procedure. It is the justice and efficiency value embodied in the pretrial process of civil litigation.The pretrial conference system has been practiced in our country for many years,and it not only played a positive role for the reform of the civil trial, but also played many functions of the system should have. While, in the application, it also exposed some problems. Firstly, due to the lack of regular and effective procedure safeguard mechanism and unified legal norms to guide, the pretrial conference in different courts or even different court operations exist obvious differences. The specific performances are as following: the scope of applicable cases and evidences are not unified, time and the moderator are not unified, and the legal effect is also not unified.Secondly, due to the lack of in-depth comprehension of the mode of civil trial reform,the judges have different understandings about arranging focuses of controversy and exchanging evidences before the meeting. Therefore, the effect is often too dependent on the judges' professional ability and their discretion will. To solve above problems,based on China's current judicial practice and beneficial experience or even lessons of foreign,we should try to improve the pretrial conference and relevant systems. Here are some suggestions. First of all, the Supreme People's Court should make unified and quantified operation rules, so as to improve the level of law in the future.Secondly, in order to ensure the effective operation of pretrial conference system in the civil litigation system, we should also establish improve the supporting systems such as the compulsory pleading, the order of evidence taking and the judges'interpretation system and so on.