摘要
Abstract
The environmental court system has stepped into its embryo with Chinese characteristics attributed to the hard push from all walks of the society,especially the progress of environmental judicial specialization,to cope with increasingly prominent problems in pollution and natural resources degradation.This court system is comprised of environmental tribunals,collegiate benches,circuit courts as well as detached tribunals at county level.The trial modes include ‘Three and One’,‘Three in One’,‘Two in One’ and singleton pattern,all of which as a whole,to some extent,contributed to the progress of environmental judicial specialization that China has made in the last few years.However,the problems and obstacles rooted in the China's environmental court system are worth paying more attention to.For instance,county level courts are lack of the authority to make relevant decisions while the intermediate and above courts have no procedural rules to cite for setting up environmental tribunals,both of which ask for legislative improvement;territoryand hierarchy-based jurisdiction are not clear-cut.Limited actionable scope and the unwillingness of pollution victims to file lawsuits result in case shortage for existing environment courts;and supporting systems fail to play their roles;for example,the special procedure is absent,monitoring evaluation organizations are not fully independent,and judges need more professional training.Facing these challenges,the potential solutions include five aspects.First,the environmental court system should operate in a law-based way through making further laws or regulations to provide legal basis for establishing environmental courts and defining the authority and responsibility of each court.Second,the hierarchy and regional distribution of environmental courts should be the key issue to discuss with in the next stage of environmental court system construction.Third,the trial model should be upgraded to ‘ All in One’.Forth,standing and litigable scope should be reasonably improved,and pollution victim's willingness to be a plaintiff should be encouraged.Fifth,the supporting mechanisms,inter alia,professional juries in the first trial procedure and committees of experts in the appellate procedure are essential in the further progress of specializing environmental judiciary.关键词
环境司法专门化/环境法庭/环境诉讼Key words
environmental judiciary specialization/environmental court/environmental litigation分类
社会科学
