The Practical Dilemma and Improvement of the Pre-litigation Procedure of Procuratorial Environmental Public Interest Litigation

Abstract

The new era of environmental public interest litigation is a beautiful crystallization of the relationship between the maintenance of public interest and legal supervision in China. It is an extension of the legal supervision function assigned to the procuratorial organs by the Constitution, which can better promote national governance and safeguard the public interest of the environment. However, in practice, the imperfection of the system and extra-legal factors have induced various problems in the pre-litigation procedure of prosecutorial public interest litigation, such as the difficulty of social environmental organizations to file public interest litigation and the legitimacy of the procuratorial organs for the "performance of duties" of administrative organs. In order to further improve the pre-litigation procedure system of procuratorial environmental public interest litigation, firstly, it is clear that the focus lies on the principle of procuratorial humility according to law. Secondly, the civil public interest litigation needs to optimize the institutional arrangement of environmental protection organizationsin ecological environmental damage litigation, strengthen the linkage between procuratorial organs and social groups, and set up multiple administrative acts review standards for administrative public interest litigation, in order to help Chinese characteristics of procuratorial system of environmental public interest litigation in before litigation procedure of continuous development and improvement in practice.