An Initial Comment On Public Interest Lawsuit

Along with the fast and sustainable development of modern economy, the life structure and human geographic environment of the whole society will change greatly inevitably; over recent years in the world-wide scale, the disputes with a group nature have been caused incessantly due to various kinds of public hazards and disasters as well as due to the protection of the rights and interests of consumers and investors, which also raises utmost impact and challenge to the traditional litigation system.There have also appeared gradually a great number of modern-type disputes; since China is now in system transformation period, the specific national condition leads to lots of loopholes existing in the protection of the public interest, which, in every field of dispute in case of the State interest and social interest being infringed upon, will fall into an isolated and helpless situation out of the lack of proper protective spokesmen.To date, the Western countries have established one after another the public interest litigation system to deal with the new-type lawsuits, and have formed a relatively mature litigation system, with greater and greater significance of such a system being displayed in the political, economic and rule-by-law fields.The greatest characteristic feature of the public interest lawsuit is that the aim of the litigant in bringing the suit is to uphold the public interest, and an "indirect interested person" can bring the suit to uphold the public interest in his/her own name to become a qualifies subject of litigation, which has undoubtedly broken through the traditional litigation idea to expand the litigant's up-to-qualification capability and thus to realize the effective protection of the public interest. Therefore, how to draw on the experience of the overseas public interest litigation system to protect our country's public interest and to build up our country's public interest litigation system has become a problem to be solved by us.