Civil Appellate System

The appeal system, which is the system where the superior court reviews the judgment made by the subordinate court that hasn't taken effect upon the claim of the appellant, has become one of the basic litigation systems around the world to achieve the judicial justice. Based on the reality of the civil litigation reform in PRC and the comparison between the appeal system of the two western legal systems and of the major countries, this paper explores the way to improve the civil appeal system in China and better achieve the objectives and value of the appeal system, in order to make the civil appeal system more in line with the principal of justice and efficiency. The paper comprises of introduction, main section and conclusion.The paper summarizes the background and achievement of the civil litigation reform in China in the introductory section and points out the researches and reform on the PRC civil litigation system emphasis on the trial procedures and give less attention to the appeal procedures. However, the appeal system has become the focus of the civil litigation reform in western legal systems and therefore the researches on appeal system in China have become necessary and urgent.The main section includes four parts. The first part introduces the definition and basic rules of civil appeal system. The civil appeal system consists of rules of judicial level, initiation, hearing and judgment. There are usual three judicial levels but two or even one judicial level systems also exist. Certain limitations usually apply to the initiation of an appeal in order to prevent the appellant to abuse the system. Among the three main hearing systems, the re-hearing system is rarely used. The common law countries usually use the post hearing system and continuous hearing system is usually used in civil law countries. The trend is that the scope of and time frame to summit the evidences are limited and the finding of facts is mainly placed in trial. In terms of judgment, most countries adopt the principal of respecting the right of disposal of the appellant and recognize the appellant's autonomy of giving up judicial rights.The second part gives a review of the civil appeal system in China. The two judicial levels system is adopted in China with the exception of one judicial level in limitedcircumstance in order to prevent the cumbersome of multi-level judicial system and balance the justice and efficiency. The initiation of the appeal in China is subject to few restrictions. Although not explicitly provided in the civil procedure code, it is not hard to see that the continuous hearing system is used in China from the provisions of the code. The reform of civil litigation applies more restrictive conditions on bringing in new evidences in the appeal and makes the finding of facts more focused in the trial. One of the characteristics of the judgment system in China is that the appeal judgment has both comments on the trial judgment and appeal rulings.The third part discusses the shortcomings of the civil appeal system in China. Firstly, there is no adequate limitation on the initiation of appeal, which encourages the abuse of the appeal procedure and results in the waste of judicial resources and increase of judicial costs as well as the caseload in the court system. The abuse of the appeal procedure also causes severe losses of the appalled party and further impacts on the credibility of the judicial system. Secondly, the appeal system does not have clear scope of claims. The civil procedure code provided that the appeal hearing shall only review the facts and laws of the appalled claims. However, it fails to provide the scope of the appalled claims and is not clear as to whether the appellant can add new claim or initiate counter-claim in the appeal. Thirdly, the fact finding rules use the "accurate and clear" criteria but the "accurate" criteria doesn't fit with the nature, logics, efficiency and practice of litigation. Fourthly, the re-judgment is distorted in appeal where some cases that should be re...