The Determination Of Causality In Criminal Justice In China

The bottom-up method means starting from the bottom,analyzing,summarizing and summarizing the way to do an aggregation of ideas,then continuing to infer upwards and finally coming to a conclusion.Case according to the guidelines of the Supreme People’s Procuratorate,the Supreme Court issued a guidance case,the referral to the criminal trial of the Gazette of the Supreme People’s Court of the People’s Republic of China "Network Gazette of the Supreme People’s Procuratorate of the People’s Republic of China and the written judge to collect and analyze the relevant documents as source data.It can be preliminarily found that in both guiding cases and non-guiding cases,the determination of causality is not often mentioned in documents,which shows that the determination of causality is not a common problem in criminal justice.In most cases,the determination of causality does not need to be specially emphasized in documents.The reason behind this phenomenon is also predictable.Professor Zhang Mingkai believes that behavioral crime is a crime in which both the behavior and the result occur at the same time,so there is no need to discuss the causal relationship,while the result crime is a crime in which there is a time interval between the behavior and the result,so the identification of the causal relationship between the behavior and the result is needed.Further analysis of the basic data shows that the problems of causality determination in China’s criminal justice are mainly concentrated in three aspects.The first aspect is that the role of causality judgment is unclear in thinking.It is not clear what "role" causality identification plays in the process of judgment,and how to help criminal justice to attribute the result to the subject.It is mainly reflected in two points.First,there exists both monism and binary distinction in the judgment of causality,and the distinction between attribution and blame is not clear.Second,the causal relationship judgment thinking is inconsistent with the traditional criminal law reasoning logic,which mainly adopts deductive reasoning,typical syllogism.But in criminal justice,the causation judgment,although the form in line with the deductive reasoning,but in fact,often because of a variety of requirements,first come to the conclusion on the issue according to the conclusion to choose the criterion or change after the judgment standard,is essentially a subversion of deductive reasoning,critical thinking and the traditional criminal law so causality reasoning logic.The second aspect is that there is no unified standard for judging causality in rules.Theory and practice are relatively unified,and they complement each other and are indispensable.The theory of causality is produced to guide criminal justice and should reflect the objective nature and law required by criminal justice.However,in fact,in guiding cases,the number of cases that only identified "causality" but did not involve specific causality theory accounted for about 67%,and the number of cases that applied theory to determine causality accounted for about 33%.In non-guiding cases,the number of documents applying theories to determine causality accounted for about 22% of criminal documents concerning causality.In addition,in guiding cases,causality determination mainly involves three theories,while in non-guiding cases,causality determination mainly involves five theories.It can be seen that no matter in guiding cases or non-guiding cases,documents or cases applying theories to determine causality do not reflect the phenomenon of uniform application of a certain theory,and even the "preferences" between guiding cases and non-guiding cases are different,and there is a separation phenomenon.There may be two reasons.One is that a certain theory is not widely used in judicial practice for the determination of causality,and the corresponding practice determination rules have not formed the corresponding theory or not reflected in the theoretical circle.Second,the judicial practice does not generally apply a certain theory to the determination of causality,and there is no corresponding practice determination rules,the specific determination mainly depends on the specific situation of the judge in the case.However,with further data analysis,no matter in guiding cases or non-guiding cases,it is reflected that criminal justice does not have uniform practice rules in the determination of causality,so the first reason can be excluded.In other words,in the determination of causality,judicial practice does not generally apply theory to the determination of causality,there is no corresponding determination rules,the specific determination mainly depends on the specific situation of the judge in the case.Then,why does criminal justice prefer to "fight for themselves" rather than apply the theory of causality in a relatively unified way on the premise of not having relatively unified practical rules of its own,reflecting that there is no unified standard for judging causality in the rules?The third aspect is the difficulty focusing on part of causation cognizance,through to the various sections and chapters on charges a preliminary analysis of crime statistics,judicial precedents for the cognizance of causality in the dispute is between influence coefficient higher section charges of malpractice,infringement of citizens’ personal rights,democratic rights crimes,the crime of endangering public security and the embezzlement and bribery.From the objective level,there are two reasons for the high influence coefficient of malfeasance crime.One is from the characteristics of the crime of dereliction of duty,the damage result of the crime of dereliction of duty occurs in the corresponding workplace.In many work occasions,the final completion of a project or a certain work is not one of the relevant work subject can be completed independently,often by multiple links with each other,that is,the phenomenon of multiple causes and one effect;Second,malfeasance and damage results often exist in space and time dislocation.The reason why the influence coefficient of the crime of violating citizens’ personal rights and democratic rights is relatively high is that its objects often involve personal safety.On the one hand,the existing technology cannot understand the complex human body system thoroughly enough;on the other hand,the rights related to personal safety are more valued than other rights.The reason why the crime of endangering public security has a high influence coefficient is that the connotation of public security includes the personal safety and property safety of the public.The damage result of the crime of endangering public security is often accompanied by the heavy loss of the person or property of the unspecified majority.Once it involves personal safety,it is similar to the situation of causality judgment related to the crime of violating citizens’ personal rights and democratic rights.Influence coefficient is higher because of embezzlement and bribery,embezzlement and bribery crimes and don’t need to judge whether a causal relationship between the amount of different,often need to determine whether behavior belongs to the embezzlement and bribery "serious",this is often need to judge whether the behavior of the actor caused serious consequences,in other words,you need to determine whether a causal relationship between criminal law.From the subjective level,in terms of data,the proportion of relevant documents of negligent crime in the determination of causality is not negligible.When the actor has no knowledge of objective elements or insufficient occasions(often manifested as negligence),the judgment of corresponding causality is more complicated and difficult.It should be noted that the problems of the three aspects are not completely independent,but can be summarized as the problems in thinking,rules and application of causality determination.Among them,the problem of thinking is the first to bear the brunt,therefore,we should first solve the problem of thinking,then solve the problem of choosing rules under the guidance of thinking,and finally solve the applicable problems in criminal justice with the corresponding thinking and rules.The first is the problem of thinking,for the causal theory of adaptation analysis.First of all,the adaptive analysis of the understanding of functional positioning.The dual distinction of criminal law causality itself,namely criminal law causality includes the attribute of legal causality.As mentioned in the introduction of this paper,causality has a wide range of categories and will be reduced according to different needs.Therefore,in criminal law,for the demand of accountability,it is necessary to find a causal relationship that can judge whether the result can be attributed to the behavior.From the unitary and dual distinguish causality theory this paper also can be seen,unified theory is always trying to "causation of criminal law" as a universal law of object,carries on the deep mining and through a variety of additional rules to make the self-consistent theory can to a certain extent,increasingly away from "the result can be attributable to behavior" in the first place.The binary distinction is the ultimate result,in which attribution is a matter of fact and attribution is an evaluation problem.Moreover,there are many loopholes in the content of the unified causality theory.But on the other hand either binary distinction theory,more or less in the theoretical circle there is criticism point of view,and on the other hand the dualistic distinguish theory though meet causation cognizance role in criminal justice at the request of the attribution on imputation normalize,but its applicable thinking is in line with the traditional criminal law inference logic remains to be verified.Secondly,in the analysis of the suitability of judgment thinking,many causality theories revise the original causality theories just to maintain the "universality" of standards.However,when we both intuitive based on justice and based on the existing law,the behavior and result in a situation when there is a causal relationship is not sure whether the inductive logic is losing its foundation-because there is no exact,not a dubious object we see it is to rule,and the old law for its premise to change is no longer valid.Therefore,the traditional theory of causality is either ineffective in this case,or it only plays a role in maintaining inertia.What used to be called theory and theoretical perfection was a constant search for "general criteria" to describe the conclusions that had been drawn in advance.In essence,the determination of causality is not a deductive inference that draws a conclusion based on major and minor premises,but an empty form of inference logic,which applies the process that can deduce the standard of the conclusion according to the existing conclusion.This is contrary to the logic of traditional criminal law reasoning.The "refinements" of causality theory,then,are barking up the wrong tree.In the past,in the debate between these diverse theories,the focus(difference)often focused on the criminal justice attribution process,to explore what degree of connection must be reached between cause and effect,how to maintain the universality of the standard,it is difficult to get perfect rules.This is the "wrong force" in thinking.In this regard,what we need is a set of theories that can connect multiple parts of the rational system of criminal law with causality through its verbal approach,and this theory functions not as a "judgment standard" but as a platform for persuasion,which means that,The key is not whether the specific point of view of a certain theory is subtle enough to properly "describe" the causal relationship in various typical cases,but whether its underlying logic and paradigm can enable it to accomplish the task of vision fusion.In other words,by the past causation judgment thinking according to the conclusion to look for the standard to describe,in the form of "realized" deductive reasoning have standard after the first conclusion of logical sequence,steering based on fusion of horizons constructed more convince system,essentially implement with deductive reasoning to convince the reasoning conclusion after logical order.Objective attribution theory has the innate advantage of perfect adaptation and can be used as a reference to assist understanding and acceptance.Create higher risk,risk and the victim is a risk to the rules of design,such as itself covers the constitutive requirements,multiple parts of the illegality judgement and involves a certain amount of social experience,value judgment and interpretation for the purpose of the specification,which makes the objective imputation theory itself is the integration of vision,as much as possible to provide the conditions for the interpretation of the imputation of attribution to persuade.This is the first "innate advantage" of objective attribution theory.In the theory of objective attribution,the evaluation usually ends up in the conclusion of "yes or no" in every field of vision.Compared with the linear unitary description of "degree",the rationality and value of the binary judgment of"yes or no" can be better reflected in the level of persuasion,which makes it possible to have in-depth discussion and mutual understanding,which is the second "innate advantage" of the objective attribution theory.In a word,on the basis of a clear understanding of the role positioning of causality,the analysis of specific problems of causality should be carried out by the system of explanation and persuasion,in order to achieve logical harmony in traditional criminal law reasoning.In terms of the specific rules of argument,we should first decompose the disputed issues in the process of argument.Judgment,in the face of the criminal law causality in thinking adhere to the attribution of imputation binary distinction and convince the role of the premise,in the face of a controversial problem cannot explain directly persuade to decompose problem constantly,through solving the problem of decomposition of reason,finally formed a set of fit to persuade others.However,how to decompose the disputed issues,the reasons for decomposition and the upper limit of decomposition times are not the real issues that need to be considered.The specific problems faced in different specific situations will be different,for example,in some cases,when the attribution judgment is completed,the attribution judgment is completed;But there are also cases where there is a discussion of attribution after the fact attribution is made.When blindly emphasizing the standard or boundary of decomposition problem,it will return to the old road of traditional causality theory.Secondly,we should take normative connotation as the main point in the argumentation process.The normative purpose is the presupposition of the criminal law and its specific provisions.Normative purpose makes it clear that not all behaviors can be imputed,only those behaviors that meet normative purpose can be imputed,and the causal relationship between behaviors and results can be identified.Although we explain and persuade causality from multiple perspectives,it is not a reasoning process of worthless formal logic,nor is it a utopian explanation and persuasion,but a principled program.In other words,the fundamental premise is that we based on the norms of criminal law,criminal law is to solve the problem of causality,only based on the norms of criminal law,all of our interpretation,persuade avoids "deviations to ensure the cognizance of the relation of cause and effect" has always been around to solve the problems in the criminal justice will also reduce unnecessary disputes.Therefore,we should also insist on taking normative connotation as the general lead when explaining and persuading.Thirdly,it should be guided by the law of criminal judgment in the argumentation process.Through the analysis of the case data,in criminal justice reasoning,there are the following laws: first,the more serious the harm result,the greater the objective responsibility;Second,the more factors that need to play a coordination role to cause a certain result,the less possibility that the behavior will cause the result;Third,the behavior is serious threat to the normal social order,the necessity of attribution is great,the degree of causal relationship between the harmful behavior and the harmful result may be weak;However,for those who violate the rules to a lesser degree,the requirement of causality between the behavior and the result may be higher.Finally,scientific identification should be used as evidence in the process of argumentation.In the process of determining causality in criminal justice,in order to achieve the purpose of persuasion,reliable objective facts are also needed as evidence to support our conclusions.Although scientific identification belongs to the category of natural science and does not have legal attributes,its objectivity is undoubtedly a powerful "assistant" to persuasive arguments.For example,participation,statistics,epidemiological(epidemiological)principles of causality and other identification techniques.The difficulty in determining causality in criminal justice is concentrated in some chapters and some crimes,mainly including malfeasance,crime of infringing upon citizens’ personal rights,crime of democratic rights,crime of endangering public security and crime of corruption and bribery.On the whole,the relevant reasons can be summarized into objective and subjective aspects.Objectively,the cases related to personal security interests are more prone to disputes.Subjectively,the cases related to negligent crime are more prone to dispute.On the one hand,although there is some objective difficulty in the specific judgment of the above problems,on the other hand,there are problems in thinking and attribution of causality in the past judgment.When the thinking and rules are revised,the field of vision returns to the difficult cases of criminal justice,the realistic value of the revision can be truly reflected.To the victim’s special constitution,medical negligence and dereliction of duty three practical difficulties related to personal safety law interests or subjective negligence to determine the causal relationship.In the face of the related causation cognizance,first should explain attribution issues,to persuade,in principle,the relationship can meet the conditions,such as in medical negligence related problems,due to the height of the medical science,in based on expert opinion should be paid attention to when the reliability of the inferential conclusions,at least need other basis for verification.Secondly,in the face of the problem of attribution,still through the interpretation of a number of small problems to finally draw the relevant conclusions,such as the crime of medical malpractice,illegal practice of medicine and so on,what is the purpose of the specification,what is the actor’s behavior representation,the actor’s subjective understanding.Again,the conclusions of science and technology should be applied flexibly,such as concepts of various medical appraisals,participation,clinical medicine,pathology,etc.First,the more serious the harm result,the greater the objective responsibility;Second,the more factors that need to play a coordination role to cause a certain result,the less possibility that the behavior will cause the result;Third,the behavior is serious threat to the normal social order,the necessity of attribution is great,the degree of causal relationship between the harmful behavior and the harmful result may be weak;However,for those who violate the rules to a lesser degree,the requirement of causality between the behavior and the result may be higher.Finally,a complete and convincing interpretation process is formed by connecting the contents of the preceding steps,so as to draw a conclusion on whether there is a causal relationship between the behavior and the result in criminal law and form a logical closed loop.