Research On The Application Of Evidence Rules In Environmental Civil Public Interest Litigation

With the rapid social and economic development in China in recent years,environmental issues have become increasingly prominent.With the advancement of modern agriculture and industry and the improvement of urbanization,the types of environmental pollution have increased and their degree has increased.It has caused direct or indirect damage to the ecosystem and has had a serious impact on people’s production and life.Since China’s environmental civil public interest litigation system was legally established in 2012,there has been an increase in related lawsuits,which indicates the urgency of managing environmental pollution and safeguarding environmental public interests.However,according to official data,the caseload of China’s environmental civil public interest litigation is not balanced with the economic development situation and the number of environmental pollution in China.This requires a corresponding improvement of the relevant environmental civil public interest litigation evidence system,such as the collection of evidence,the standard of proof and the distribution of burden of proof.Judging from the current status of legislation and practice,most of the application of environmental civil public interest litigation evidence rules is based on the application of civil evidence rules.The particularity of environmental pollution and the professionalism and scientific nature of environmental evidence determine that special rules and systems of evidence should be applied in environmental civil public interest cases.In view of this,this article attempts to proceed from the rules of civil evidence and to link the principles with the judicial practice for researching the construction of the rules system of environmental civil public interest litigation evidence in China so as to provide useful reference for the development of the entire litigation system.The article is divided into four parts and the content is as follows:The first part introduces the basic theory of civil evidence rules.The concept,role and classification of civil evidence rules and the legal provisions of our country concerning civil rules of evidence in the midst of this part.Clear rules of civil evidence are the general term for collecting and applying evidence.The second part analyzes the predicament of application of the general civil evidence rules in environmental civil public interest litigation.Environmental civil public interest litigation is a special litigation form in environmental litigation underthe civil litigation system.It has certain specialities in both entity and procedure.Therefore,the application of general rules of civil evidence,such as the collection of evidence,the distribution of burden of proof,and the determination of the standard of proof,have many problems in environmental civil public interest litigation,such as the narrower approach of evidence collection and more difficult in burdensome proof of the plaintiff’s burden of proof.The third part discusses the rules of special evidence of environmental civil public interest litigation and its application.First of all,through the introduction of China’s current environmental civil civil lawsuit special evidence rules legislation,a general understanding of China’s environmental civil public interest litigation evidence rules.Then,from the perspectives of the collection of evidence,the distribution of burden of proof,and the determination of the standard of proof,the environmental civil public interest litigation cases that have taken place in China in recent years are analyzed to find out where the problems lie and why.First,the parties and the court have different difficulties and problems in collecting evidence.Second,the rules of inversion of the burden of proof in the burden of proof in the burden of proof and the presumption of causality remains confusion.Third,the determination of the standard of proof has not been adjusted accordingly based on the special nature of civil public interest litigation.The fourth part addresses the issues in the third part,and proposes suggestions on the application of environmental civil public interest litigation evidence rules from the aspects of legislation and practice.In terms of evidence collection,it includes laws and regulations to collect evidence,and state agencies provide support for evidence collection.In terms of the distribution of burden of proof,persist in the rule of causality to prove liability inversion.In the aspect of certification standards,the certification standards are determined according to different facts to be proved.