Research On Civil Small Claims Litigation Procedure

With the rapid economic and social development,legal relations have become more complex,and the number of disputes in various cases in the judicial field has surged.With the continuous development of the economy,people’s thinking has continued to advance,and the will to defend rights has also been continuously strengthened.Therefore,in the face of various disputes in life,people are increasingly inclined to take up the weapon of law and protect their legal rights and interests.In stark contrast to the huge number of civil cases,the judges of the grassroots courts in our country have been facing great work pressure for a long time.As for the parties,the long trial period and high lawyer fees also increase the cost of civil litigation and virtually increase the threshold for rights protection.In this context,the academic community has absorbed the experience of developed countries and promoted the implementation of small claims procedures.In the "Civil Procedure Law of the People’s Republic of China" revised in2012,our country provided small claims procedures in the form of separate articles in Article162,and then the Supreme People’s Court issued corresponding judicial interpretations in 2015 to provide detailed regulations.In February 2019,the Supreme People’s Court issued the“Fifth Five-Year Reform Program of the People’s Courts(2019-2023)”,which pointed out:We must continue to lasso to expand the scope of application of small claims procedures,and strengthen traceability governance and other reform supporting measures.In January 2020,the Supreme People’s Court formulated the "Implementation Measures for the Pilot Reform of the Diversion of the Complex and Simplified Civil Litigation Procedures" and carried out the pilot work,emphasizing the important role of small claims in the reform of the diversion of the complex and simplified civil procedures.The legislative process of small claims has confirmed its importance and also reflected the problems in judicial practice from the side.This article takes our country’s small claims procedure as the research object,adopts empirical research methods and comparative research methods to analyze,through empirical research on the judicial practice of the Tianjin Binhai New District Court and Beijing,Shanghai,and Zhejiang analyze the problems existing in my country’s small claims procedure at this stage from the legislative and judicial levels.In terms of legislation,small claims procedures have problems such as unclear legislative positioning,insufficient protection of procedural benefits,and imperfect remedies for the parties.In terms of judicial practice,small claims procedures have problems such as low application rate,relatively narrow application scope,insufficient methods for closing cases by judgment,and difficulty in enforcement.This article compares the practical experience of several typical foreign countries small claims systems,analyzes the similarities among them,and combines the actual conditions of our country to improve the legislation of small claims procedures,enhances the simplicity of small claims,and improves the small claims procedures.Proposals are made in four aspects: the conversion and convergence of the lawsuit and the improvement of the implementation of small claims,with a view to gradually perfecting the small claims procedure in our country,so that it can play its due role.