The Legal Analysis Of "Citizens’ Petition"

With the continuous development of the market economy, Chinese democracy and the rule of law, the legal literacy of citizens and the awareness of right become increasingly enhanced. In recent years, the citizens’ letters that give advice and protect rights, seem to be necessary existence in the process of Chinese socialist construction of democracy and rule of law. And in practice, the social phenomenon is called "citizens’ petition" and has become a noticeable. In order to use law knowledge and analysis methods to understand "citizens’ petition" by different view, the article choose "citizens’ petition" legal analysis as the research subject. It helps "citizens’ petition" better achieve its value in the construction of democracy and rule of law.This article is divided into four parts. The first part is the general theory of "citizens’ petition". In the part, by basing on the present documents research, author summaries the history and the current development status of "citizens’ petition". Besides, on the basis of the right of citizen oversight theory and legal origin, the author believes the "citizens’ petition" is the behavior that the citizen exercises the right of citizen oversight. And in order to more fully understand the "citizens’ petition", the author horizontally compares it with the hearing behavior of citizens and the behavior of writing letters and visiting. The second part is the legitimacy analysis of "citizens’ petition". Firstly, author analyses the active effect of "citizens’ petition" on democracy by the people’s sovereignly theory, participation in the democratic theory and deliberative democracy theory. Then, the author analyzes the value of "citizens’ petition" in the legislation, justice and law enforcement by the theory of rule of law. In the third part of the thesis analyzes difficulties when the "citizens’ petition" affects the construction of democracy and rule of law. Besides, the thesis also analyzes the reasons to those problems. In the fourth part, based on the fact and value analysis of "citizens’ petition", the author gives some suggestions to the problems that "citizens’ petition" faces. Such as strengthening citizen’s legal quality, building a review and reply system and supplying the lawsuit protection. The author hopes the advice can better help the citizens, through the "petition", exercise their supervision right of the citizen, realize the real democracy and improve construction of rule of law.