Public interest litigation by procuratorial organs is a public interest lawsuit, a supervision lawsuit, and a coordination lawsuit
The "circle of friends" for judicial protection of public interests has gradually expanded
Chart Maker: Wu Meiyu
On February 25, 2022, the procuratorial cadres and police of the Renqiu Municipal Procuratorate of Hebei Province followed up to supervise the installation and use of centralized charging piles for electric vehicles in residential areas. Photo by Xiao Junlin and Ge Yaming
On August 19, 2021, the Chongqing Municipal Procuratorate held a case consultation forum on the illegal collection and use of citizens' personal information by a number of apps to harm the societal public interest. Photo by Jiang Yong
On February 10, 2022, more than 10 million netizens watched a live procuratorial hearing, which revolved around the ecological and environmental public interest litigation case in the South Fourth Lake Basin.
From the pilot authorized by the National People's Congress in 2015, to the full implementation of formal legislation, and then to the attention of tens of millions of netizens in a case today, procuratorial public interest litigation has gone through an extraordinary course, and the "circle of friends" of public interest judicial protection has gradually expanded and become more deeply rooted in the hearts of the people.
The establishment of a public interest litigation system initiated by procuratorial organs is a major decision and deployment of the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping as the core to promote the comprehensive rule of law. Standing on the scale of the centenary of the founding of the party, the development of procuratorial public interest litigation work under the party's absolute leadership is also a vivid practice of realizing people's democracy in the whole process of the mainland's rule of law. Public interest protection, no one is a bystander, the results achieved by procuratorial public interest litigation must also be on the basis of co-construction and co-governance to achieve the sharing of benefits and ecology.
Focus on the big picture
Serve the overall situation to protect people's livelihood
How to better safeguard the public interest is a topic that has been explored in the history of the world's rule of law, and China's procuratorial public interest litigation has contributed the largest number of practice samples.
Exploring the establishment of a public interest litigation system initiated by procuratorial organs is a major reform deployment made by the Fourth Plenary Session of the Eighteenth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, and is also an important institutional arrangement for promoting the modernization of the national governance system and governance capacity with rule of law thinking and rule of law: the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress made a decision in July 2015 authorizing a two-year pilot project in 13 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities; in June 2017, the Civil Procedure Law and the Administrative Procedure Law were revised to formally establish this system; in October 2018, In April 2019, the procuratorial authority of public interest litigation was written into the revised Organic Law and Procuratorial Law of the People's Procuratorate.
The procuratorial public interest litigation system has gone through stages such as top-level design, legal authorization, pilot first, legislative guarantee, and comprehensive promotion, and has embarked on a path of public interest judicial protection with Chinese characteristics.
Safeguarding a better life is an important value orientation for procuratorial public interest litigation. Ecological and environmental resources, food and drug safety, closest to the people's lives, are the key areas of attention of procuratorial public interest litigation. Since July 2020, the Supreme People's Procuratorate has deployed a three-year special supervision activity of "public interest litigation to protect a better life", and this special supervision activity has now progressed more than halfway, and the effect of "protection" has continued to appear.
From January to November 2021, procuratorial organs across the country filed a total of 79,087 public interest litigation cases in the field of ecological environment and resources, an increase of 2.52% year-on-year; and 26,263 food and drug safety public interest litigation cases were filed, an increase of 5.36% year-on-year.
In the process of handling criminal cases, the procuratorate of Songyang County, Zhejiang Province, found that Liu, Ji and others added prohibited ingredients to slimming capsules, which may infringe on the legitimate rights and interests of many consumers and harm the social public interest. Through criminal incidental civil public interest litigation, the procuratorial organs made the illegal producers and sellers bear punitive compensation liability of 10 times the sales price, and the court awarded more than 13 million yuan in damages. "If I could choose again, I would never do such a stupid thing again, harm others and harm my family!" Ji Mou, who has already served his sentence, is full of remorse.
The Suining County Procuratorate of Jiangsu Province v. Suining County Ecological and Environmental Bureau administrative public interest litigation case is one of the 29th batch of Guiding Cases issued by the Supreme People's Procuratorate. In the course of the trial of a criminal case of environmental pollution, judicial personnel went to the scene of dumping sludge to check the situation and found that the Suining County Ecological and Environmental Bureau did not perform its duties to dispose of the sludge involved in the case according to law, and there were problems such as a company in the transfer and parking place that did not have the conditions to store sludge and secondary environmental pollution. After the Suining County Procuratorate performed the pre-litigation procedures in accordance with the law, the Suining County Ecological and Environmental Bureau still did not perform its duties in place, and the procuratorate initiated an administrative public interest lawsuit in accordance with the law. Wang Xianbo, the presiding judge of the case, believes that the case is based on risk prevention, strengthens leading promotion and judicial coordination, and has positive significance for correctly understanding the scope of responsibilities of the administrative department of environmental protection and effectively giving play to the role of the administrative public interest litigation system for environmental resources.
On November 15, 2019, the Xuzhou Railway Transport Court rendered an administrative public interest litigation judgment, supporting the procuratorate's prosecution opinion. After the trial, the Suining County Ecological and Environmental Bureau published a procurement announcement and a winning bid announcement on the Internet, and identified the hazardous waste disposal company. Under the supervision of the Suining County Ecological and Environmental Bureau, the company carried out harmless disposal of the oil sludge and some of the contaminated soil involved in the case, and standardized the disposal of the scene involved in the case. The procuratorial organs have supervised the above-mentioned process.
Before litigation, no lawsuit is better than prosecution. In procuratorial public interest litigation, the realization of public interest protection before litigation is the best judicial state, and the number of prosecution cases does not account for a high proportion of all cases filed and handled, but as the "back hand" of procuratorial public interest litigation supervision, it enhances the supervision rigidity of pre-litigation procuratorial suggestions, and dares to strengthen the supervision effect by filing lawsuits for "hard bones" and "old and difficult" cases.
In 2020 alone, procuratorial organs issued 118,000 pre-trial procuratorial suggestions, and the response rate of administrative organs to rectification was 99.4%, and more problems were resolved before litigation. How can a paper procuratorial recommendation become a lever to pry the boulder? In the words of Wu Yuanyuan, mayor of Tongshan District, Xuzhou City, Jiangsu Province, public interest litigation allows administrative organs to re-examine ecological environmental protection work from the perspective of "defendant", and public interest litigation can be used as an important means to promote the high-quality development of the ecological environment.
Improve the system
The "territory" of the statutory field is gradually expanding
All major reforms must be based on the law.
The scope of procuratorial public interest litigation cases clearly stipulated by the law at the beginning of the establishment of the system was only in the fields of ecological environment and resource protection, food and drug safety, protection of state-owned property, and transfer of state-owned land use rights.
The promulgation of the Law on the Protection of Heroic Martyrs has given the procuratorial organs the functions of promptly shining their swords against acts of insulting and defaming heroic martyrs, initiating public interest lawsuits in accordance with the law, and vigorously punishing lawbreakers by legal means. Since then, the statutory field of procuratorial public interest litigation has formed a "4+1" pattern. The newly formulated or revised laws on production safety, personal information protection, military status and rights protection, and protection of minors all set up public interest litigation provisions, and the "territory" of the statutory field has been expanded from the traditional "4+1" to "4+5".
In August 2021, the Supreme People's Procuratorate issued the 29th batch of Guiding Cases, of which guiding cases in the field of production safety appeared for the first time, providing strong reference guidelines for all localities to handle similar cases. On the day of the deliberation and adoption of the Personal Information Protection Law, the Supreme People's Procuratorate released 5 personal information protection cases through a special issue on public interest litigation cases, guiding all localities to highlight key case-handling priorities such as education and medical care, face recognition, and online platforms, and to supervise and ensure the unified and correct implementation of the law.
The Chongqing Municipal Procuratorate set up a special case team for the illegal collection and use of personal information by mobile apps to harm the public interest, and He Hengyang, chief procurator of the procuratorate, presided over a case consultation meeting, organized the Municipal Cyberspace Administration, the Public Security Bureau, and the Market Supervision Bureau to jointly study and consult, reached a consensus and signed the "Opinions on Strengthening the Coordinated Governance of the Illegal Collection and Use of Personal Information by Apps".
More and more fields are included in the statutory scope of procuratorial public interest litigation duties, and improving systems and standardizing case handling have become the focus of current work. In 2021, the Supreme People's Procuratorate issued the Rules for handling Public Interest Litigation Cases of People's Procuratorates, which is the first judicial interpretation of procuratorial organs to systematically regulate the handling of public interest litigation cases, providing a standardized basis for the whole process and systematization of case handling.
In all areas of procuratorial public interest litigation, the law of case handling has been continuously explored in practice, and procuratorial organs have promptly issued normative documents, promoted the construction of systems and mechanisms, and gradually formed a case-handling guidance system with wide coverage and strong operability.
In the field of ecological environment, promote the establishment of a coordination mechanism for administrative public interest litigation across administrative divisions of provincial boundaries in the Yangtze River Basin; in the field of food safety, the Minutes of the Symposium on Exploring the Establishment of a Punitive Compensation System for Civil Public Interest Litigation on Food Safety were jointly issued with the Supreme People's Court and other units; in the field of heroic martyr protection, special work guidelines were issued, and the "Opinions on Further Strengthening the Standardized Management of Martyrs' Memorial Facilities" was jointly issued with the Ministry of Veterans Affairs and other departments; Guidelines for People's Procuratorates' Public Interest Litigation Case Handling Hearings" and so forth.
The Fourth Plenary Session of the Nineteenth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China proposed to "expand the scope of public interest litigation cases", and in order to further implement the requirements of the central government, the Supreme People's Procuratorate adjusted the principle of external exploration of procuratorial public interest litigation from "prudent and active" to "active and prudent". In the "Opinions on Strengthening the Legal Supervision Work of Procuratorial Organs in the New Era" issued by the CPC Central Committee, this work has once again been clarified. From a practical point of view, outside the scope of the existing laws, the pain points, difficulties and hot areas of the people in safeguarding the public interest are also the key areas for public interest litigation to play a role.
In recent years, the expansion of new fields has yielded fruitful results, and procuratorial organs have handled a large number of cases of concern to the people in the fields of cultural relics and cultural heritage protection, barrier-free environment construction, and protection of the rights and interests of women and the elderly. In 2020, the Hangzhou Municipal Procuratorate opened a special supervision of the procuratorial public interest litigation of barrier-free environment construction, and during the visit and investigation, it was found that problems such as insufficient mandatory legislation on barrier-free environment construction, lack of main responsibility, and inadequate administrative supervision still exist.
The Gongshu District Procuratorate of Hangzhou City issued a pre-litigation procuratorial recommendation to the Municipal Port and Navigation Bureau in view of the long-term lack of barrier-free facilities at the two passenger terminals of Gongchen Bridge and Xinyifang. After receiving the procuratorial suggestions, the Municipal Port and Navigation Bureau immediately urged the responsible company to quickly complete the wheelchair configuration and barrier-free access addition, and at the same time launched a special inspection of the construction of barrier-free environments at the city's passenger terminals and ship orders. "I see the value of our work." The prosecutor handling the case said.
Improve quality and efficiency
Handling a case affects one piece
Since the procuratorial public interest litigation work was fully launched, the number of cases handled has gone up step by year: 113,000 in 2018, 127,000 in 2019, and 151,000 in 2020; from January to November 2021, the national public interest litigation procuratorial departments filed and handled 153,000 public interest litigation cases, which has exceeded the number of cases handled in 2020.
Entering a new stage of development, the simple increase in the number of cases handled cannot meet the actual needs, and improving quality and efficiency is the goal pursuit of public interest litigation. The Supreme People's Procuratorate has taken self-handled cases as the starting point to highlight the handling of major cases, directly filed and handled 6 public interest litigation cases, and 104 cases directly filed and handled by provincial-level procuratorates, achieving full coverage of self-handled case filing and promoting the resolution of a series of major public welfare damage problems.
Stand up the ruler and bow your head. Whether it is the first public interest litigation case directly filed and handled by the Supreme People's Procuratorate, the Wanfeng Lake Ecological Environment Damage Project, or today's Nansi Lake Basin Ecological Environment Damage Project, it provides a reference for all localities to solve the problem of cross-regional environmental governance.
The Nansi Lake Basin involves 34 counties (cities) in 4 provinces, and implements segmented management according to the division of water areas, and the focus and methods of management vary greatly. From the 237 case clues sorted out by the case-handling team, it was found that the root cause of the problem was, in the final analysis, the ecological environment governance standards caused by different administrative divisions were not uniform.
After the Supreme People's Procuratorate filed the case, Zhang Xueqiao, deputy procurator general of the Supreme People's Procuratorate, served as the leader of the case-handling team, and the sponsoring procurator directly led the team to handle the case, and more than 200 procuratorial personnel from the Eighth Procuratorate of the Supreme Procuratorate and the four-level procuratorial organs of Shandong, Jiangsu, and Anhui provinces formed a case-handling team to handle the Nansihu project in an integrated way, and urged the relevant responsible entities to work together to control the pollution of the river basin.
Procuratorial organs handling public interest litigation cases are not going it alone, but with the goal of win-win and win-win situation, and through handling cases, they promote all parties to form a joint force and work together to achieve public interest protection. Through handling cases, the understanding of environmental protection in all parts of the Nansi Lake Basin has been gradually unified: the procuratorial organs of the four provinces will sign collaborative opinions; they will take the initiative to report to the local party committee and government, and receive strong support, and the administrative organs represented by five ministries and commissions, including the Ministry of Ecology and Environment and the Ministry of Natural Resources, will actively cooperate; the Standing Committee of the Shandong Provincial People's Congress will issue the "Regulations on the Protection of the NansiHu Lake in Shandong Province"...
"Litigation of public interest, litigation of supervision, litigation of coordination." Zhang Xueqiao summed up the relationship between procuratorial organs and administrative organs in public interest litigation. Both administrative organs and procuratorial organs are under the leadership of the party, both are centered on the interests of the people, and the division of labor is different, but the responsibilities of pursuing values and protecting the public interest are the same. Through handling cases, procuratorial organs and administrative organs form a synergy, which is the originality of China's procuratorial public interest litigation system and the place where its vitality is highlighted.
Through several years of exploration and development, the "circle of friends" of public interest litigation has been continuously expanded and its attractiveness has been continuously enhanced, and the concept of win-win and win-win has continued to deepen in cooperation with administrative organs and social organizations. At the same time, big data, satellite remote sensing, unmanned aerial vehicles, rapid detection and other technologies are widely used to promote the realization of a technological revolution in case handling.
As a new system, "innovation" has always been the main theme of development, and it has given this system a strong vitality. For the procuratorial organs, this new procuratorial function, which is related to comprehensively promoting the rule of law and the modernization of the national governance system and governance capabilities, has a heavy responsibility and a glorious mission.
Source: Justice Network Headline Number