认真对待软法——公域软法的一般理论及其中国实践

我国最近20多年的公域之治一直在实践着一种软硬兼施的混合法结构,这在相当程度上彰显出民主政治与法治建设的中国特色。本文认为,包含着大量本土性制度资源的“软法”,是一种法律效力结构未必完整、无需依靠国家强制保障实施、但能够产生社会实效的法律规范。软法与硬法同为法律的一种基本表现形式,它以不同于硬法的方式体现法律的基本特征、实现法律的主要功能,并具有严格区别于硬法的个性特征与独特功能。软法与硬法大致具有法律逻辑上的错综复杂、法律功能上的优势互补、法律规范上的相互转化三种基本关系。软硬兼施的混合法模式乃是我国解决公共问题的基本模式,这就要求我国公法学回应公域之治的现实需要,在对软法作用加以客观评析的基础上,研究探讨全面提升公域软法的理性品质,并按照宪政精神与法治原则的要求推动中国公法朝着软硬兼施的混合法结构方向发展,旨在全面实现公域之治与法治目标。

Taking Soft Law Seriously

During the past two decades, China's public governance has adopted a mixed legal structure that consists of both hard and soft aspects. This reflects the Chinese characteristics of democracy and the construction of rule of law to a great extent. This article demonstrates that containing a large volume of regulatory resource, soft law is a legal norm with perhaps incomplete structure of legal effect. Its enforcement does not rely on government's mandatory enforce, but it can yield actual social impact. Same as the hard law, soft law is also a basic form of law. However, the way soft law reflects the basic characteristics of law and perform major functions of law is different from that of hard law. Its characteristics and functions are completely different from that of hard law. In general, soft law and hard law have three types of relationships: complexity in legal logics, complementary in legal functions, and convertible in norms. The mixed legal structure consisting of both soft and hard legal aspects, is a basic model to solve public issues in china. This requires the Chinese public law to respond to the current needs of public governance, to explore the overall improvement of the quality of public law on the basis of the objective evaluation of the functions of soft law; and to promote the development of Chinese public law toward the soft-hard hybrid structure, in accordance with the requirement of constitution and rule of law, with the ultimate goal of public governance and rule of law.