Research On Judicial Application Of Environmental Pollution Crime

The Criminal Law of the People’s Republic of China(revised in 1997)establishes the crime of major environmental pollution accidents as a milestone in the process of environmental criminal development in China.However,the crime has certain limitations in terms of both theory and judicial application.In order to effectively protect the legal benefits of the ecological environment,the "Criminal Law Amendment(8)" amended the "crime of major environmental pollution accidents".In addition to changing the crime to "crime of environmental pollution",it also revised the criminal acts,objects and consequences at the same time,expanding the scope of application of this crime.The "two highs" promulgated relevant judicial interpretations in 2013 and 2016 to supplement and improve the application of environmental pollution crime.However,social and economic development has put forward higher requirements for the application of this crime.Due to the shortcomings of the legislative provisions and the lagging of judicial interpretation,there are still many problems in the judicial application of the crime of environmental pollution in China,especially in terms of constituent elements and the application of penalties.This article intends to conduct an empirical study on the sample cases of the first trial of Tianjin’s environmental pollution crime included in the " Judgment Documents Network " case retrieval platform,to find problems from the current status of judicial application of this crime,to conduct in-depth analysis,from the theoretical,legislative,judicial and cognitive levels.Carry out investigations on the causes,and then put forward practical solutions,with a view to promoting theoretical research on the crime of environmental pollution and the effective solution of judicial application of the crime.In addition to the introduction and conclusion,this article mainly discusses from four parts.The first part mainly expounds the concept of the crime of environmental pollution from the perspective of the constituent elements of the crime,and discusses the legislative evolution of the crime with the timeline as a clue,it provides a foundation for follow-up research on the judicial application of this crime.The second part,after the statistical analysis of the judgment cases collected by the "Judgment Documents Network" case retrieval platform,analyzes the current status of judicial application of the crime from the perspective of constituent elements and penalties,and finds that the main existence of the crime in judicial application The issues are "controversy in the determination of the form of guilt","difficulty in determining the common crime","controversy in the determination of the completed form" and "the prevalence of sentencing and light punishment".The third part analyzes the relevant influencing factors from four perspectives:theory,legislation,justice,and ideology.For example,the legal benefits of the crime are not clear,the legislation itself is imperfect,the lagging of judicial interpretation itself,some judicial judges are affected by cognitive factors and other reasons.The fourth part proposes measures to solve the problem of the application of this crime in the judiciary,proposes to amend the content of this crime,re-identify the "serious pollution of the environment" in the judicial interpretation,and guarantee the independence of the judicial judges in exercising their discretion Finally,it is recommended that judicial adjudicators should appropriately apply the humility of criminal law,improve the professional quality of environmental science,centralize jurisdiction over environmental crime cases,and realize the professionalization of judicial adjudicative teams.