Source: Shandong Provincial People's Procuratorate
"It is necessary to promote procuratorial public interest litigation legislation as soon as possible, and we can no longer take the 'free ride' of the Civil Procedure Law and the Enforcement Procedure Law." "On the battlefield of public welfare protection, the procuratorate has become the main force of the people." "Trials are a confirmation of the public interest, and in order to implement the protection of public interests, it is necessary to strengthen the procuratorial supervision of judgment enforcement activities." ......
Recently, a symposium on procuratorial public interest litigation legislation jointly organized by the China Law Society, the Supervision and Judicial Commission of the National People's Congress, the Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate was held in Beijing. The innovative research results have further condensed consensus and provided reference for solidly promoting the legislation of procuratorial public interest litigation.
The top-level design gives birth to vivid judicial practice
Exploring the establishment of a system for procuratorial organs to initiate public interest litigation is an important policy decision and deployment made by the Party Central Committee. From top-level design to practice, from partial pilot to comprehensive promotion, from start-up development to development and improvement, the procuratorial public interest litigation system has become an important achievement of comprehensively governing the country according to law, and has shone vigorous vitality in the hot practice of the construction of rule of law in China——
In October 2014, the Fourth Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China deliberated and adopted the Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Several Major Issues Concerning Comprehensively Promoting the Rule of Law, which clearly stated that "exploring the establishment of a system for procuratorial organs to initiate public interest litigation".
On May 5, 2015, the 12th meeting of the Central Leading Group for Comprehensively Deepening Reform deliberated and adopted the Pilot Plan for the Reform of Public Interest Litigation Initiated by Procuratorial Organs, and the top-level design took shape.
Recently, cadres and police officers of the Kenli District People's Procuratorate of Dongying City, Shandong Province walked into the Yangmiao community of Dongji Town to carry out family education theme publicity activities, calling on parents to consciously assume the main responsibility of family education.
On July 1 of the same year, the 15th meeting of the Standing Committee of the 12th National People's Congress passed a decision authorizing the Supreme People's Procuratorate to carry out a two-year pilot project of filing public interest litigation in 13 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the Central Government, including Beijing. As of June 2017, procuratorial organs in pilot areas had handled a total of 9,053 public interest litigation cases.
In June 2017, the 28th meeting of the Standing Committee of the 12th National People's Congress voted to adopt the decision on amending the Civil Procedure Law and the Administrative Procedure Law, and the system for procuratorial organs to file public interest litigation was explicitly written into these two laws, marking the formal establishment of the system for procuratorial organs to file public interest litigation in the form of legislation on the mainland.
Gu Qingyue, a deputy to the National People's Congress and associate professor of the School of Equipment Management and UAV Engineering of the Air Force Engineering University, believes that since the procuratorial public interest litigation was first proposed in 2014, in just nine years, a relatively mature legislative condition has been formed through a large number of rule of law practices, and it has been included in the legislative plan of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, which fully shows that the procuratorial public interest litigation system not only meets the requirements of the times for the comprehensive rule of law, but also is the aspiration of the people.
"The substantive legal basis for procuratorial authorities to file public interest lawsuits is still insufficient. The formulation of the Procuratorial Public Interest Litigation Law can provide a clear legal and substantive basis for procuratorial organs to initiate public interest litigation, and further improve the procedures for public interest litigation. Wang Liming, vice president of the China Law Society and president of the Civil Law Research Association of the China Law Society, believes that based on the legal supervision and judicial nature of the procuratorial organs, it is more conducive to the solution of public interest infringement that the procuratorial organs should intervene first. How the procuratorial organs form a linkage mechanism with relevant ecological and environmental functional departments, how to share information, and how to jointly investigate and collect evidence, etc., all need to be clarified by legislation.
Sun Youhai, vice president of the Environmental and Resources Law Research Association of the China Law Society and director of the Basic Theory Research Base of Procuratorial Prosecution of Tianjin University, believes that the Procuratorial Public Interest Litigation Law is a procedural law, and it is necessary to clarify the procedural rules for procuratorial public interest litigation; It is a law aimed at safeguarding the public interest, with objective litigation attributes, and legislation should be distinguished from legislation on the protection of private interests; It is a special law in the legal system of public interest litigation, which should be combined with the legal supervision duties of the procuratorial organs to highlight the supervisory nature of procuratorial public interest litigation.
Concept innovation helps improve the quality and efficiency of case handling
The procuratorial public interest litigation system is a system design that uses rule of law thinking and methods to solve prominent problems infringing on the public interest and promote the modernization of the national governance system and governance capacity in the context of the era of comprehensive rule of law.
Since the full implementation of this system, the party group of the Supreme People's Procuratorate has adhered to the concept of leading practice and summed up and improved, forming a series of public interest litigation procuratorial work concepts.
——Win-win, multi-win and win-win. Public interest litigation prosecution is not a "zero-sum game", the essence is to help government departments administer according to law and jointly safeguard the fundamental interests of the people by strengthening the supervision of public interest damage, and obtain strong support from all parties. Over the past six years, this concept has been extended from the initial performance requirements to the final effect realization, from the requirements for the performance of duties by procuratorial organs to a multi-party consensus, from a win-win situation between procuratorial organs and the government and their departments to a win-win situation in the entire governance community such as legislation, law enforcement, and justice.
The picture shows that in August this year, the public interest litigation prosecutor of the Quanzhou City procuratorate in Fujian Province visited the surrounding area of Quanzhou's "World Heritage Site" to explore the clues of public interest litigation on cultural relics protection, and promoted the special circuit inspection of cultural relics protection of "Procuratorial Protection Treasure and Guardian of Haisi Famous City" on the spot, so as to ensure the construction of a model city for the protection and utilization of world heritage with the service of the rule of law.
-- Prioritizing the goal of urging administrative organs to correct themselves before litigation. In practice, procuratorial organs make full use of the greatest political advantage of the party's leadership of everything, actively and forcefully promote administrative organs to play the role of active error correction mechanisms, and use non-litigation methods such as consultations or procuratorial suggestions to urge administrative organs to perform their duties in accordance with the law, and promote the resolution of the vast majority of cases in the pre-litigation link. From July 2017 to the end of 2022, more than 584,000 pre-litigation procuratorial recommendations for public interest litigation were produced and issued nationwide, and the pre-litigation rectification rate of administrative organs reached 99.8%.
——Continuous follow-up and supervision. In order to ensure the effectiveness of case handling, the procuratorial organs pay attention to the continuous follow-up from the pre-litigation procedure to the initiation of litigation to the enforcement of judgments, and take the "review" of the rectification effect of the whole process as a "prescribed action", and strive to restore the damaged public interest. At the same time, it is required to extend from case-by-case handling to similar cases and regional rectification, and promote the formation and improvement of long-term governance mechanisms.
In practice, initiating litigation, as the "second hand" of procuratorial public interest litigation supervision, on the one hand, enhances the rigidity of supervision of pre-litigation procuratorial recommendations; On the other hand, for "hard bones" and "old and difficult" cases, it can more effectively promote the rectification of problems. The vivid and rich judicial practice of procuratorial organs has provided high-quality practice samples for the formulation of the Procuratorial Public Interest Litigation Law.
"The institutional advantages of integrated prosecution enable public interest litigation to overcome the drawbacks of localism and effectively put an end to the chaos of litigation at home and away." Yu Lingyun, vice president of the Administrative Law Research Association of the China Law Society and professor at Tsinghua University Law School, has a comprehensive observation on the handling of public interest litigation cases. He believes that administrative public interest litigation often solves "hard bones", and from the perspective of effectiveness, procuratorial recommendations sent to local governments are often more conducive to solving problems. "It is recommended to make it clear in the legislation that when formulating and issuing procuratorial recommendations to functional departments, a copy should be sent to the local government, or the competent department at the next higher level." Yu Lingyun said.
Yu Wenxuan, vice president of the Environmental and Resources Law Research Association of the China Law Society and vice president of the School of Civil and Commercial Economic Law of China University of Political Science and Law, said that the procuratorial public interest litigation legislation should fully absorb the experience of existing legislation and judicial interpretations, and pay special attention to the connection mechanism between environmental administrative public interest litigation and environmental civil public interest litigation procedures, so as to achieve synergy between different systems, which is conducive to handling the relationship between various types of public interest litigation.
Although the scope of procuratorial public interest litigation cases is actively and steadily expanding, Wang Jingbo, secretary general of the Administrative Law Research Association of the China Law Society and president of Heilongjiang University, still believes that due to the relative lag of legislation and the actual changes of public welfare, objectively there will be situations where the existing legislation is difficult to cover all public interests. To this end, Wang Jingbo proposed that the criteria for defining the scope of public interest litigation cases can be comprehensively considered, such as the criteria for interests, the criteria for the selection order of administrative power and procuratorial power, etc.
Wholeheartedly serve the overall situation and protect people's livelihood
The road is like a rock, and the original intention is not slack. In the comprehensive advancement of public interest litigation, the procuratorial organs have always focused on the center to serve the overall situation, and gave full play to the unique institutional effectiveness of public interest litigation prosecution in promoting national governance.
Procuratorial organs perform their duties as "public interest representatives" in accordance with law, the quality of procuratorial public interest litigation case handling continues to grow, the fields of performance of duties continue to expand, systems and norms are becoming increasingly perfect, and the system operation results are remarkable.
In terms of the number of cases handled, in 2018, the number of public interest litigation cases handled by procuratorial organs nationwide exceeded 100,000, more than 110,000 in 2019, more than 150,000 in 2020, 169,000 in 2021, and 195,000 in 2022.
From the perspective of case handling, the statutory fields of procuratorial public interest litigation have expanded from ecological environment and resource protection, food and drug safety, state-owned property protection, and transfer of state-owned land use rights when authorized by the Civil Procedure Law and Administrative Procedure Law to "4+10" fields including the protection of heroes and martyrs, and continue to expand to new fields such as cultural relics protection.
From the perspective of the effectiveness of handling cases, from July 2017 to the end of June 2022, through handling public interest litigation cases, procuratorial organs across the country urged the restoration of about 7.86 million mu of damaged arable land, forest land, wetlands and grasslands, recovered and cleaned up more than 45.84 million tons of various garbage and solid waste, recovered 9.35 billion yuan in ecological restoration and environmental treatment costs, and urged the protection and recovery of all state property and rights worth about 15.95 billion yuan...
"As a bright business card of China's judicial system, the procuratorial public interest litigation system is a major project of the people's hearts, from green waters and mountains to clothing, food, housing and transportation, and has been integrated into all aspects of people's production and life." Wang Zugang, deputy to the National People's Congress and deputy manager of the Shijiazhuang Project Department of China Railway Sixth Bureau Fengqiao Bridge Co., Ltd., believes.
"As a prosecutor who has been on the front line of handling cases since the full implementation of the procuratorial public interest litigation system, I am full of expectations for legislation." Hu Weili, deputy director of the Eighth Procuratorate Department of the Zhejiang Provincial People's Procuratorate, said, "Procuratorial public interest litigation practices justice for the people through the 'people's nature' of public participation. In our work, we often invite people's congress deputies, CPPCC members, 'Yixin for the public' volunteers, people's supervisors, etc. to participate in and supervise the handling of cases, including providing clues, assisting investigations, professional consultation, public hearings, effectiveness evaluation, review and other links, combining legal supervision and justice for the people, practicing people's democracy in the whole process with high-quality performance of duties, and better safeguarding national interests and social public interests. ”