Research On The Legal Protection Of Citizens’ Right To Know

Citizens’ right to know has become one of the basic human rights universally recognized in democratic countries under the rule of law.Citizens’ right to know is not only an important expression of the relationship between citizens’ rights and obligations with the government,but also a prerequisite for citizens to participate in public affairs and exercise other political rights.At present,the legal protection system of citizens’right to know in China is not complete,and it needs to be improved by legal theory and legal practice.This paper starts from the overview of citizens’ right to know,and then studies the issues related to the legal protection of citizens’ right to know in China.The paper is divided into the following five parts:First,the overview of legal protection of citizens’right to know,including the concept of citizens’ right to know,the nature of citizens’right to know and the origin of citizens’ right to know;second,the theoretical basis of legal protection of citizens’ right to know,mainly the theory of people’s sovereignty,the theory of human rights protection and the theory of power restraint;third,the current situation of legal protection of citizens’ right to know,from the current situation of legislative protection,administrative protection and judicial remedy respectively.Fourthly,the legal protection of citizens’ right to know in China is still inadequate,firstly,the legislation is not complete,the constitution lacks clear provisions on citizens’right to know and the legal status of citizens’ right to know is low;secondly,the administrative enforcement is not sound,there is no perfect information disclosure management and review system and the government information disclosure lacks supervision;finally,the judicial remedy is ineffective,mainly it is difficult for the courts to file cases and for citizens to win lawsuits.Fifth,the improvement of the legal protection of citizens’ right to know.The legislative protection of citizens’ right to know should be improved by setting up special constitutional provisions and formulating the government information disclosure law;Improve the law enforcement mechanism from two aspects:improving the management and review system of information disclosure and strengthening the supervision of government information disclosure;To strengthen the judicial relief of citizens’ right to know,we should expand the scope of court filing to explore the public interest litigation system and clarify the rules of proof.