Soft Law And China's Communication Of The Modern Rule Of Law

Through out the world, the globalization of economy has brought with it global problems, with which global governing problems emerge accordingly. Kaing China as an example, the rapid development of economic system, and a diversity as social problems as well as promoting construction of rule by law put forward new requirements and challenges for Chinese legal system construction. Thus to establish a complete legal system and perfect the construction of rule by law have become a hot topic in the law theoretical research domain. Nowadays, China is in the middle of its social transformation, and the society is undergoing a transition from planned economic system to market economic system. Meanwhile, people’s life style, behavioring mode as well as their ideas of value are changing. As an effective means and powerful tool to adjust the society, lawmaking should not only adapt itself to the economic system transition, but also to the changing ideas people have. With the subjective conciousness of the public strenghtening and their appeal for public interests increasing, the hard law centered state ruling management model gradually shows its shortcoming. However, a soft law centered governing model featured with negotiability and flexibility is revealing its advantages.Because of a variety of reasons, the research on soft law hasn’t got due attention from scholars in the field of science of law, and therefore it is still in the primary stage. Thus in combination with analysis of the status quo of rule of law in China, this thesis focuses the research on soft law by taking methodologies such as historical analysis, Game Theory, systematic analysis and sociological analysis. First of all, the paper will define what soft law is and help to recognize soft law, thus to introduce a general view of it. Secondly, through dating back to the origin of soft law, both at home and abroad, this paper retells the process of soft law’s formatiom. Then it attempts to attract people’s attention to the soft law by analysing the social, political, economic and cultural value on it. Thirdly, by combining soft law with China’s status quo of rule by law construction, and through comparison of soft law and hard law(constitutional law), the paper points out the advantages and weaknesses of the former, thus to improve its application in practice. Finally, the author generalizes that the aim of analysing soft law is to perfect the regulations and to boost legal system, thus to enlighten rule of law. In a multicultural country like China, it’s impossible to solve all the social problems and conflicts in a single way. Specifically in law application, it is also impractical to rely only on hard law to include all things in. Through research on soft law, we know better that rule by law does not completely equate legal system, it shouldn’t be confined to hard law. Since many of the social regulations are rooted in the social life, they are already accepted by the public. Consequently, these regulations are endowed with properties of stability and authoritativeness, as well as continuity. Hence, to realize the effectiveness of regulation, we need to count on not only the constitutional law but also the invisible public acknowledged force. Only by incorporating social regulations and transforming them into legal state laws, can we make our laws inclusive and suitable for the situation in China, In the meantime, law of this kind can represents the harmony between law and man, as well as law and the nature, which put the interaction between punishment and education in unity thus to maintain legal and social stability. Therefore, studies on soft law are of great significance in the course of modern law construction in China.