环境民事公益诉讼法律适用困境及其破解

环境民事公益诉讼在司法实践中已得到大量运用,但其存在以下法律适用上的问题:第一,在对具体个案是环境民事公益诉讼还是其他私益诉讼的性质判断上,现有裁判存在显著差异。第二,在环境民事公益诉讼与类似案件的审理中,不同案件裁判者在程序选择与裁判结果上也呈现各异的走向。原因在于该诉的法律适用中存在"公共利益"等现有民事法律体系难以评价的规范性构成要件。究其根源,是该诉的独立请求权基础尚未得到明确。因此裁判者在审案时通过"借用"环境侵权之诉等类似诉讼请求权基础进行涵摄时,其法律适用过程就容易产生混同。明确环境民事公益诉讼请求权并精细该诉的法律规则,有助于环境民事公益诉讼程序的公正运行与裁判结果的日趋统一。

Dilemma of Law Application in Environmental Civil Public Interest Litigation and the Solution thereof

Though environmental civil public interest litigation has been widely applied in judicial practice,it has the following problem in its law application.First,there are significant differences lying in current judgments,between the recognition of nature of action:environmental civil public interest litigation or other private lawsuits.Second,in the trial of environmental civil public interest litigation and similar cases,the present cases also indicated the diversities of procedure choices as well as final rulings by individual judges.The reason is the undetectable exist of normative constitutive requirements hiding in the conception of"public interest",which is considerably difficult to evaluate under current civil legal system.The underlying reason is therefore the lack of independent basis of claim right of this new litigation.On this ground,when judges have to borrow the claim right of traditional environmental tort lawsuit in subsumption process of environmental civil public interest litigation,the confusion of law application occur.Thus,defining the basis of claim right in environmental civil public interest litigation and making more delicate procedure rules thereof will contribute to the access to justice together with judicial unification.