| With the great achievement of rapid economic development in the past forty years,we are confronted with increasingly serious ecological crisis.Various types of environmental pollution and environmental tort events emerge in an endless stream,from Bohai Sea to the south,as well as from the Yangtze River Delta to the north of desert.Compared with the general tort,environmental tort is more complex,and the identification of causation is more difficult,which leads to a great deal of difficulty for the victims of environmental tort to seek judicial remedies.In order to better protect the rights and interests of environmental tort victims,China has explicitly stipulated the reverse rules of the burden of proof on the causation of environmental tort in a series of legislative and judicial interpretations of the law,like the Tort Liability Act.In reality,however,the reverse rules of the burden of proof could exceed the proper limits,being failed to effectively implement in the actual operation of the judiciary.In judicial practice,the judicial officials often imply the"measurement outside the law" to rebalance the interests of the parties.Practice and academic circles at home and abroad continuously study and summarize the method of causation identification of environmental tort,pointing out a variety of presumption theories of causation,such as "evidence theory of preponderance","causal theory of disease" and "indirect disproof theory".Based on the affirmation of the burden of proof on the great progress,this paper explains the difference between inversion of the burden of proof and presumption of causation under the core of "interest balance".In the judicial practice of the environmental tort disputes,this paper emphasize on further determining the presumption principle of causation,solving the problem of causation identification,protecting the legitimate rights and interests of the parties involved in the case,and protecting the ecological environment more effectively. |
PDF Full Text Request