Search

Recent developments in marine environmental public interest litigation in China raise questions about the procedure and operation of the procuratorial organ – a body that can support public interest aspects of litigation. This article examines the legal basis of public interest litigation in both a civil and criminal context. It considers the practice of other States, including the United States, as a point of comparison. A key issue is to determine the meaning of public interest, and how this relates to national or social interests, since this will influence the work of procuratorial organs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars consider deficient local accountability mechanisms a key shortcoming of China's response to environmental issues. Through empirical analysis of the new procurator-led public interest litigation (PIL) system, this study examines whether – and to what extent – this shortcoming can be remedied by empowering the juridical institutions. It concludes that thanks to the procuratorates' political insider status, relative autonomy from local politics and extensive resources, procurators have generally found ways to maintain a delicate balance between holding executive agencies environmentally accountable and managing local governments' resistance to the PIL system. However, reliance on top-down political support may ultimately hinder the expansion and stability of the procuratorial PIL system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Article 70 of Personal Information Protection Law of the People's Republic of China provides a framework for the public interest litigation system of personal information protection. After a comprehensive review of the public interest litigation system of personal information protection combined with legislative norms and judicial cases, it finds that the applicable conditions of public interest litigation of personal information protection in China are relatively general, the rules of the subject of litigation right are not clear, the litigation path is biased, the pre-litigation procedure is not set up comprehensively, the litigation request is relatively single, and the litigation procedure design is thin. In order to give full play to the effectiveness of the system, more legislations should be supplied. Specific measures are suggested as follows: to refine the types of illegal processing of personal information and the requirements for the number of victims; to clarify the relationship between administrative power and procuratorial power; to clarify the order of three types of legal subjects filing information public interest litigation and the qualification conditions for prosecution by relevant organizations; to clarify the relationship between the three types of public interest litigation and establish a mechanism for the selection of litigation types; to optimize the pre-litigation procedure setting from the review of litigation initiation to the follow-up of implementation; to set up new public interest demands of prevention, compensation and recovery; to actively explore the claims for damages and punitive damages in information public interest litigation; and to explore special rules in terms of public interest jurisdiction, proof, mediation, withdrawal of litigation and second instance in accordance with the law in combination with the particularity of personal information protection, so as to promote the good operation of information public interest litigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public prosecutors are a key element within the legal complex, and crucial to the effective implementation of legal reforms. China's procurators (public prosecutors) have previously colluded with local governments, police, and courts to "strike hard" against crime while overlooking systemic beating and torture of detained suspects to obtain confessions, shoddy investigative practices, and frequent miscarriages of justice. However, fifteen sets of Guiding Cases issued by the Supreme People'sPro- curatorate since 2010 promote an unprecedented change in Chinese procurator culture away from "striking hard" to substantive protection of criminal suspects' rights and exclusion of tainted evidence. They reinforce criminal procedure reforms since 2010 by demonstrating how procurators should protect innocent people against wrongful convictions and police brutality. They also stress the broader duty of China's procurators to uphold the public interest against corrupt businesses and officials, especially in food safety, land-taking, and environmental protection cases. With other key actors in China's "legal complex"--rights lawyers and civil society groups--still suppressed by the government, this effort to transform procurator culture is an essential, though still incomplete, step on China's tortuous path toward a fair and just legal system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While legal scholarship seeks mainly to assess the impact of climate change litigation (CCL) on the regulatory state and on climate change policy in common law countries, the potential influence of government climate policy on the judicial practices of jurisdictions with different legal traditions attracts much less attention. This article fills the gaps by exploring how courts in China, an authoritarian country with a civil law tradition, react to government climate policies and how this judicial response might affect relevant legal rules and eventually contribute to climate regulation. An empirical analysis of 177 Chinese judicial cases reveals that CCL in China consists mostly of contract-based civil actions steered by the government's low-carbon policies. Moreover, although the prospects of CCL against public authorities in China remain very bleak, there is scope for the emergence of tort-based CCL, backed by government policies. In this respect, recent tort-based public interest litigation on air pollution in China may serve as a substitute or, more promisingly, a gateway to the emergence of a tort-based branch of Chinese CCL. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are two options for environmental tort remedy in China: resorting to environmental administration or environmental justice, with an ongoing debate over which of the two should lead. Firstly, it compares the structure of China's environmental tort remedy system and the two types of power: administrative power and judicial power, concluding that administrative power is dominant. Then, it argues for the indispensability of judicial power, attempts to find a clear boundary between the two sides, and justifies their mutual division of labor and collaboration. Through sufficient demonstration, it clarifies why the dominant position of environmental administrative power must be guaranteed. Then, it summarizes the experience of other countries and the practice of environmental protection in China; and provides three innovative paths of the future environmental rights remedy system. These three aspects are setting up a review procedure for administrative priority judgment before filing an environmental lawsuit, establishing the independent position of experts in environmental litigation, advocating a risk communication mechanism other than litigation, and providing a richer institutional guarantee for the relief of environmental rights.