Research On The Legitimacy Of Legislative Consultation In Ethnic Autonomous Areas

The term "legitimacy" has different meanings in Chinese.In specific,its referents can vary in different situations.Basically,there are two different subtypes: one refers to the behavior of individuals,which means the accordance with legal requirements;The second refers to a certain kind of public power or political order,which equals to legitimacy,authority and practical validity.The former refers to the narrow-sensed law or the real law,especially the statute of the state;the latter refers to the broad-sensed law,that is,the law and principle of things in addition to the narrow-sensed law.Accordingly,there are actually two definitions of legitimacy.The first is the "legality" of real law or the narrow-sensed law,and the second is the "legality" of the broad-sensed law.The legislative consultation of ethnic autonomous areas is a process during which the ethnic groups participating in the consultation bring their own ideas into the legislative consultation and seek mutual understanding in the exchanges with others.As a result,the law originated from the consultation process is seen as shared rules and the group’s legal consciousness get improved by consulting with and learning from others.Therefore,the various kinds of legitimacy in legislative consultations of ethnic autonomous areas should be categorized into the broad-sensed legitimacy with characteristics of justification,authority,and practical validity.By making clear and analyzing the relationship between these three elements,we find that authority is built up on justification and practical validity.Thus,it naturally follows that clear definition of justification and practical validity can ensure the realization of authority.Our discussion will focus on justification and practical validity in the reminder of this paper.By making clear the definition of the legitimacy of the legislative consultations in ethnic autonomous areas,we find that three core facts should be involved: First,due to the multi-ethnic nature in the ethnic autonomous areas,the legislative consultation representatives of all ethnic groups who enjoy equal rights in this process may exert great divergence on individual rights because of various incompatible but reasonable religions,philosophy,and moral values.Can the representatives reach a consensus so as to reconcile individual differences? If so,what is the basis of this consensus? This becomes the core issue of the legitimacy analysis;Secondly,an agreement must be reached in the end of a legislative consultation,but economic differences will inevitably lead to inequality in cognitive resources,which will further lead to a serious asymmetry of the role played in the legislative consultation forum.Therefore,it is necessary to analyze the connotation of consensus in legislative consultation.Thirdly,the validity and legitimacy of legislative consultation should include the following two parts: mandatory and reasonable acceptability.Acceptability lies in the fact that the law itself is an exchange of views among representatives of various ethnic groups participating in the legislative consultation.The value consensus that is finally condensed in the legal norms establishes a standard for judging the legality of the law and also constitutes the validity of legal value.Therefore,the value of the validity of the law formulated by the legislative consultation is equal to the moral validity of the law,and the moral validity of the law is related to its legitimacy.It can be said that the legal validity of the law is determined by the legislative consultation as well as an important influencing factors in terms of legitimacy.As for the first question,this paper proposes "discussive morality" as the basis of consensus.In "discussive morality",morality and cognition are not static,but dynamic with the continuous change of people’s knowledge.And consultation can promote continuous progress in ethics and cognition.Regarding the second question,this paper deems that consensus is a method rather than a goal.For the third issue,this paper analyzes the legitimacy of legislative consultation through a normative and empirical perspective.In addition to the introduction and conclusions,the main body of this paper consists of three chapters.The first chapter mainly discusses the concept and connotation of the legitimacy of the legislative consultations in the ethnic autonomous areas;the second chapter mainly analyzes the legitimacy of the legislative consultations in the ethnic autonomous areas;the third chapter focuses on the legislative consultations in the ethnic autonomous areas through analysis of legal legitimacy.