| "Public interest", as a key word, is frequently used in both normative legal documents and legal theories. It is a highly abstract legal concept which could be easily misunderstood. In view of this, it is quite necessary to do some further study on its connotation, range and other related issue, in order to avoid the confusion in legal practice. This paper will analyze the connotation of "public interest" from varies aspects, and tries to find the appropriate and reasonable way to define its range.There are five parts in this paper including introduction and four chapters:The introduction is to discuss the importance and necessity for analyzing the connotation and defining the range of "public interest", three real cases in legal practice are listed in order to emphasize the severe status caused by the dispute on the definition of "public interest".In chapter one, the main content will be analyzing the connotation of "public interest". Firstly, the author will examine the meaning of "public" and "interest" respectively. Next, other "interest" that closely related to "public interest" will be discussed, the comparison between them will be done. Because if we want to recognize the connotation of "public interest" adequately, we must have a clear understanding on both "public" and "interest", and could distinguish it from other related "interest".In chapter two, the author will first present the legal documents and legal practice about "public interest" in China, analyze the difficulties in the definition of it, and try to find the reasons. And then, the author will summarize the research achievements made by Chinese scholars.In the third chapter, the foreign practices on the definition of "public interest" are introduced. The author is to analyze and summarize the experiences of several typical countries, with a view to get some inspiration from them, and be helpful for the study and regulation of "public interest" in China.The most important part of this paper will be chapter four. In this chapter, the author will place emphasize on defining the range of "public interest". Unlike the usual way of talking about this question, the author will discuss it from a new angle in order to find an appropriate solution for defining the range of "public interest". There will be four sections in this chapter. The first section is to discuss who has the power to defining "public interest"; the second section is to analyze the criterions and principals on defining the range of "public interest"; the third section will be mainly about the procedures; the fourth section will eliminate several "interest" that is prone to be incorrectly defined as "public interest". By these series of work, "public interest" could be clearly recognized and appropriately defined. |
