Research On The Expert Assistants In Environmental Administrative Public Interest Litigation

The clear water and blue sky is what our heart desires.Some local governments obsessed with increasing the speed of economic development and neglected environmental protection.In particular,some administrative organs’ inaction and disorderly actions have led to serious environmental pollution and damage.The state attached great importance to the legal regulation of such inaction and indiscriminate action of administrative organs,and in 2017 established the environmental administrative public interest litigation system with the procuratorial organs as the prosecutors.In environmental administrative public interest lawsuit,there are common problems such as taking the evidence difficulty,higher demand of technique,higher cost and time of environmental forensic identification,which lead to greater difficulties for the judiciary in fact finding.As environmental administrative public interest lawsuit has just sprung up,it is particularly important to improve the system of expert assistant and use it efficiently in practice under the judicial appraisal of environmental damage is difficult to meet the real demand.This paper tries to give suggestions by grasping the special characteristics of environmental administrative public interest lawsuit,and by taking the administrative public interest litigation cases on the Judicial Instrument Online and the guiding cases issued by the Supreme Prosecutor and the Supreme Court as the entry point to dig out the problems in the application of expert assistant by courts,procuratorial agency and administrative agency.The paper are divided into three parts,The first part provides an overview of the expert-assisted system for environmental administrative public interest litigation.On the basis of defining concept of expert assistant,author summarizes the characteristics of the expert-assisted system and then distinguishes it from the easily confused concepts in detail.At the same time,the part also elaborates the special value of expert assessor in environmental administrative public interest litigation.The second part reviews the current situation and problems of the expert-assistants system in environmental administrative public interest litigation in China.In terms of legislation,the relevant judicial interpretation issued by the Supreme Court stipulates the property and status of expert assessor in environmental public interest litigation,which claims that the opinions of expert assistant on professional issues in court can be used as the basis for determining facts after cross-examination.However,in the process of implementation,the phenomenon of "experts not appearing in court" and "experts opinions walking the world" is widespread,leading to confusion in the operation of the expert-assisted system.The system of expert assistant in administrative public interest lawsuit has a series of problems,such as unclear qualification standards,unclear validity of expert assistant’ opinions,wavering neutrality of expert assessor,lacking of restraint and management,and imperfect procedure of participation in lawsuit.In third part is some advises for improving expert-assisted system in environmental administrative lawsuit.Firstly,it is important to clarify the selection criteria,litigation status and neutrality requirements of the expert assistant,standardize their participation in the proceedings.And to improve the relevant supporting measures simultaneously.