Study On Criminal Law Application Of Environmental Pollution Crime

The crime of environmental pollution is established after the amendment(?)of the Criminal Law,and its predecessor is the crime of serious environmental pollution accidents.The Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate issued judicial interpretations on the crime of environmental pollution in 2013 and 2016,refining the standard of conviction for this crime,expanding the scope of application of this crime,so the number of criminal cases of environmental pollution crime in judicial practice is increasing.The change of the charge of this crime is actually the result of the change of the legislative idea behind it,which also leads to the change of subjective and objective aspects such as the standard of sin,causation and the form of the offence,This paper studies the application of criminal law caused by these changes,and also rethinks the application of criminal law to the crime of environmental pollution.The first chapter studies the content of the protection of legal interests according to the development and change of the legislative concept of the Environmental Pollution Crime.Throughout the world environmental criminal law legislative concepts,we can find that the trend is from humanism with the core of protecting human interests to ecologicalism with the core of protecting ecological interests.China's legislative concept of environmental pollution has also undergone this transformation.According to the theory of ecological environmental criminal law,China's criminal law pays more and more attention to protecting ecological environment itself.The legal benefit of environmental pollution crime protection is no longer a simple human legal benefit,but a combination of ecological legal benefits and human legal benefits,which is a hierarchical dual structure.The ecological legal benefits are the legal benefits of priority protection,and the human legal benefits are the basic legal benefits,both of which are indispensable.The second chapter studies the application of criminal law in the form of dangerous criminals and the causal relationship in the objective aspect of the crime of polluting the environment.According to the current judicial interpretation,the“severe pollution of the environment” is a double stipulation of crime of conduct and result crime,If this crime is stipulated as the result of the crime,the criminal law lags behind the governance of the environmental crime,and the crime is defined as the behavior,which may over-criminalizes the crime.This paper believes that according to the criminal law's early protection concept of ecological legal benefits,this crime should be set as a specific dangerous criminal,in the case of a specific criminal to judge the danger of hazardous acts polluting the environment,which is conducive to combating ecological environmental crimes and preventing excessive crimes of this crime.In view of the difficulty in identifying the causal relationship of polluted environment,the theory of causality presumption can be adopted in judicial practice,in combination with other supporting evidence,it is presumed that causality is established.The third chapter mainly discusses the subjective sin form of the crime of polluting the environment.According to the environmental criminal law idea of ecologicalism,the criminal offence form of the revised environment pollution crime should be intentional,This is shown by the fact that the actor has knowledge of the harmful behavior of infringing ecological interests and still carries out the pollution behavior,allowing the result of environmental pollution to take place.Therefore,the subjective intention of the actor can be identified.Admit that "intentional theory" will bring about the problem of how to characterize the environmental pollution caused by subjective negligence.Acknowledging that "deliberately speaking" will bring aboutthe problem of how the environmental pollution caused by subjective negligence mentality can be characterized.Such behavior can constitute a crime of negligently placing dangerous substances or negligent crimes of endangering public safety.Administrative penalty can be imposed on the conduct of minor harm,so as not to cause a loophole in the regulation of negligent behavior caused by environmental pollution crime.The fourth chapter focuses on the trend of the application of the criminal law's expansion of environmental pollution crime,and proposes a reasonable method of limitation of application.Because environmental pollution crime advance the protection of ecological interests,the judicial interpretation stipulates that some pollution acts need not result in any substantial pollution results,as long as the prescribed standard can be incriminated,leading to excessive application of this abstract dangerous crime standard in judicial practice to identify the crime of environmental pollution,the lack of substantive identification of the consequences of pollution,simplification of conviction.Although the expansion of the crime of polluting the environment is the trend of modern criminal law in the risk society,it should also abide by the principle of modesty of the criminal law,and reasonably limit the application of the crime.The application of the expansion of the crime of restricting pollution can be started from the following two aspects: on the one hand,we can apply the specific dangerous criminals to limit the excessive application of abstract dangerous criminals,examine the causal relationship between environmental behaviors and results in the case,and judge the possible environmental pollution.On the other hand,the severity of the consequences of environmental pollution should be determined substantively,not just a written review of the appraisal opinions.