Talk About Our Country’s Civil Verdict In The Effectiveness Of A Pre-determined Limit

The facts confirmed by a judgment that have legal effect in a court of law are referred to as "decided facts" in civil litigation,and the pre-decision effectiveness of these decided facts refers to a pre-determined binding force that they have on subsequent litigations.The rule first appeared in Article 75(4)of<Opinions of the Supreme People’s Court on the Application of the Civil Procedure Law(1992)>and has since become a rule of evidence widely used in civil judicial practice in China.However,this rule has never had a clear theoretical basis,creating obstacles to understanding,and has led to inconsistent application in trials.Although the latest judicial interpretation has clarified the pre-decision effectiveness,the application criteria for pre-decision effectiveness have not been specified.In practice,judges cannot uniformly apply this system without specific rules,damaging the authority of the judiciary.Therefore,it is necessary to define the legal nature of pre-decision effectiveness and establish unified rules for its application.This article is divided into three parts,excluding the introduction and conclusion.Part one reviews the pre-decision effectiveness system in Chinese civil judgments and examines its application in trials.Chinese legal provisions on pre-decision effectiveness have changed frequently,but the necessary conditions for applying rules related to the application method,scope and limits of pre-decision effectiveness have not been clearly defined,leading to problems such as overemphasizing pre-decision effectiveness,unclear objective limits,and inconsistent subjective limits in judicial practice.Part two compares and analyzes the theories of pre-decision effectiveness in domestic and foreign academia.Currently,scholars mainly explain pre-decision effectiveness based on the theory of res judicata,the doctrine of issue estoppel,and judicial knowledge.This article compares these theories and believes that,based on the fact that the previous litigation facts have undergone sufficient debate and procedural safeguards,pre-decision effectiveness should be regarded as a fact-finding effect and used as the basis for the pre-decision effectiveness system.Part three analyzes the limits of pre-decision effectiveness.Firstly,the subjective limits of pre-decision effectiveness should,in principle,be limited to the same parties in the previous and subsequent litigations under the premise of procedural guarantees.In special circumstances,there may be a substantive understanding of the same parties,such as beneficiaries in litigation succession and litigation representatives.Secondly,based on the requirements of the debater principle,the principle of disciplinary action,and the principle of procedural safeguards,the objective limits of the pre-decision effect should be restricted to the basic facts that have been fully contested by the parties in the previous lawsuit and have been substantively judged by the previous court.In addition,the pre-decision facts should also meet the requirement of relevance to the later lawsuit facts and the pre-decision facts should not have changed.