Reform of lawsuit system and revision of filing conditions

Currently the Civil Procedure Law stipulates rather “high conditions” for lawsuits and the reason is that in the institutional design, we have equated the conditions of adjudicating the merits with those of lawsuits and the initiation of lawsuits. The trial of conditions of adjudicating the merits are usually conducted after the beginning of lawsuits, while in China it is carried out before the beginning of lawsuits, and thus the related procedures have become a kind of “pre-lawsuit procedures”, and theoretical and institutional confusions and contradictions arise. This article is of the opinion that filing conditions should be separated from those of adjudicating the merits, and the trial of the latter should be incorporated into the proceedings. A “dual” trial structure should be constructed, that is, the trial of conditions for adjudicating the merits goes parallel with that of merit disputes. In the attempt to improve civil procedures, attention should be given to the institutionalization of conditions of adjudicating the merits, which should be reasonably designed and integrated into relevant systems. When reforming the lawsuit system, we should also adjust the courts’ trial organs. We recommend not setting up any case-filing or appeal divisions and removing the existing “separation of case-filing and trial”. __________ Translated from Law Study, No. 6, 2004