The Application Dilemma And Legal Perfection Of My Country's Consumer Public Interest Litigation Evidence Rules

With the development of the socialist market economy and the deep promotion of the supply-side structural reform,new consumer disputes are emerging and the number of the cases harming public interests is increasing.Among those,the cases damaging consumers' legal rights and interests have occupied the larger proportion,which has disturbed the normal market economic order.When the number of the consumer public interest litigation cases is increasing,the legislation and judiciary are also constantly changing,making the original evidence rules no longer applicable to the growing demand of the public interest litigation.Therefore,to solve this application dilemma,it is an inevitable choice to improve and perfect the rules of evidence in the consumer public interest litigation.On August 31,2012,the latest civil procedure law was implemented,which explicitly added the clauses on the consumer public interest litigation.In February,2015,the Judicial interpretation of the civil procedure law was released,which materialized the detailed operation standards for the public interest litigation with the operability and feasibility.On April 24,2016,the Supreme People's Court published"The supreme people's court's interpretation of several issues concerning the application of law in the case of consumer civil public interest litigation".With this interpretation,the consumer public interest litigation system would be furtherly improved and the legal protection of the rights and interests of consumers can be guaranteed.Though the consumer public interest litigation has obtained considerable development,the relevant judicial interpretation still lacks practices.Faced with the increasing of consumer public interest litigations,on one hand the theoretical research should be strengthened,and on the other hand,the relevant legal system should be improved and perfected in the judicial practice.As one critical component of the civil procedure law in China,the system of the evidence rule is the generic term of the rules of the evidence procedure as well as the concrete applications of the evidence,including the investigation,collection,examination and judgment of the evidence as well as the performance of the burden of proof.The perfection of the law of evidence in litigation can help to ascertain the truth to settle the disputes between the parties and to protect citizens' legitimate interests.Compared with the litigation principles and evidence rules in the traditional civil litigation,China's consumer public interest litigation system has its own particularity.Based on the actual situations of the consumer public interest litigation in China,this paper discusses some relevant problems,such as the connection and differentiation between the rule of evidence in general civil litigations and that in civil public interest litigations,and the relevance between the rule of evidence in the consumer right protection and that in the consumer public interest litigation.After that,the application dilemma of the general evidence rules in the consumer public interest litigation is analyzed,and the theoretical and practice problems of the evidence rule in the consumer public interest litigation are jointly discussed.At last,from the aspects of the legislation and judicature,this paper tries to propose some relevant suggestions to perfect the evidence rule in the consumer public interest litigation,hoping to contribute to the better defense of consumers' legitimate interests in the consumer public interest litigation.