A Study On The Closing Method Of Environmental Civil Public Interest Litigation From An Empirical Perspective

Environmental civil public interest litigation(the ECPIL)has made great progress in China,and has been widely concerned and discussed by the theoretical and practical circles.In the face of environmental pollution and ecological destruction,the qualified subjects stipulated by law can be held accountable to the environmental infringers by way of litigation,which undoubtedly provides a new way to solve environmental problems besides administrative and criminal methods.The development of the ECPIL system is of great and far-reaching significance to the cause of environmental protection,the development of ecological civilization and the cultivation of the rule of law,which also encourages legislators and judicators to constantly explore the direction of perfecting this system.There have been different views on the way of closing the ECPIL,especially on the application of mediation procedure.Article 25 of the interpretation of several issues concerning the Application of Law to the trial of the ECPIL issued by the Supreme people's Court clearly stipulates that the ECPIL can be concluded by means of judgment and mediation,which recognizes the principle of "limited mediation" in the ECPIL in the form of judicial interpretation.However,the above provisions do not make specific provisions on the time,scope,methods,limits and other procedural issues of the application of mediation,which brings considerable difficulties to the application of mediation in the ECPIL cases.it is urgent for the relevant functional departments to further clarify the relevant system by means of legislation or interpretation.The author believes that in order to better realize the value of the the ECPIL system,first of all,the relevant provisions should be established and perfected from the system level,and the applicable scope,time and procedure of different ways of closing the case should be clearly defined through legislation or judicial interpretation.secondly,the functions and powers of the court should be strengthened to establish the leading position of the court in the process of hearing the ECPIL cases,especially in the process of mediation.Third,in the process of hearing the case,we should consider the legal relationship and background of the case as a whole,and study the solution of the case from the perspective of properly resolving contradictions and promoting the coordinated development of ecological environment and social economy.This paper focuses on the empirical research on the way of closing the case of the ECPIL,which is divided into five parts:the introduction part mainly discusses the background,significance,research status and research methods of the topic;the first chapter sorts out the relevant contents of the current normative documents about the closing methods of the ECPIL,and finds out the problems and loopholes in the current legal norms.Combined with the statistical data of the the ECPIL cases tried by the S Provincial Court where the author works in recent years,the second chapter finds out some commonness and problems about the way of closing the case in the current judicial practice of the ECPIL;and summarizes and introduces the innovative experience about the way of closing cases in the judicial practice of the ECPIL based on the analysis of several typical the ECPIL cases.In view of the problems analyzed above,the third chapter gives some suggestions on how to improve the closing mode of the ECPIL from two aspects:strengthening the functions and powers of the court and improving the relevant system.