Public Interest Litigation Research Articles

Public End through Private Means: A Comparative Study on Public Interest Litigation in Europe

Public interest litigation aims to enforce through judicial proceedings not only the rights and interests of the individual claimants, but also those of the whole social group to which they pertain, if not of the whole collectivity. In this sense, it seeks to represent the rights of minorities, advance equality and bring positive social change through the courts. This article aims to situate the debate over public interest litigation in Europe by arguing that, although imperfect, it can still represent a key tool for societal change and for the protection of the new social and meta-individual rights, whenever responsible public actors fail to do so. In particular, building on previous academic literature and on the existing case law, the article, first examines the evolving concept of public interest litigation. Second, it generally presents the complex European architecture of judicial protection in which the different procedural techniques of public interest litigation are called to operate. Finally, under the comparative yardstick, it focuses on three relevant techniques available in such a European framework: constitutional review, the pilot-judgement procedure and class actions.

Turning “public interest litigation” into a positive obligation deriving from Article 47 of the Charter: Deutsche Umwelthilfe

Turning “public interest litigation” into a positive obligation deriving from Article 47 of the Charter: Deutsche Umwelthilfe

China's marine environmental public interest litigation: current situation, challenges, and improvement approach –analysis based on 339 cases

Marine pollution and ecological damage seriously undermine economic and social development and human life and health and threaten the sustainable development of human society. With the rapid development of industrialization and urbanization and the intense exploitation of marine space and marine natural resources, China’s marine ecology is facing serious problems such as pollution of marine waters, the decline of marine plant and animal resources, and the impairment of the ecological function of coastal zones. China’s marine environmental public interest litigation (MEPIL) has achieved remarkable results in protecting marine natural resources, safeguarding the marine ecosystem, and preventing marine pollution and ecological damage. The paper closely combines the judicial practice of Chinese MEPIL, exploring 339 legal cases brought by administrative organs, public prosecutors, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) presented on the China Judgment Online from 2018 to 2023. It can be concluded that three modes of MEPIL, namely civil, administrative, and civil public interest litigation incidental to criminal proceedings, have been constructed. Attempts have been made to confirm the standing of the litigation, improve the pre-litigation procedure, and clarify the types of compensation. However, significant obstacles exist in China’s MEPIL. Theoretical clarifications and practical distinctions with other types of proceedings should be made. The current standing should be improved regarding procuratorial organs, administrative authorities, and social organizations. Court jurisdiction systems need to be enhanced. Inconsistencies in the legal provisions on whether MEPIL cases must be under the exclusive jurisdiction of the maritime courts have impeded the efficiency of the handling of cases. The corresponding solutions to the aforementioned obstacles are also analyzed. Clarifying the MEPIL’s nature and improving the relevant laws, and regulations, are essential measures. In addition, providing the explicit interpretation of the legal provisions, expanding the standing, and improving the jurisdictional and other legal system should be explored.

The Construction of Securities Public Interest Litigation System from the Perspective of Protecting Small and Medium Investors

Securities violations have dual consequences, both damaging public and private interests. The emergence of securities public interest litigation can bridge the gap between "private remedies" and "public enforcement" in the governance paths. However, due to the lack of legal provisions and judicial practice, the establishment of the securities public interest litigation system and its operation need to be explored. This article, from the perspective of protecting small and medium investors, discusses the goals and challenges of constructing the securities public interest litigation system. It also examines the necessity of using public interest litigation to restrain the abuse of controlling shareholders' rights and protect the interests of small and medium investors. Regarding the obstacles faced by current securities public interest litigation, the main issues include the questionable legislative positioning and the need for clarity in specific procedures. In the process of exploring the construction of the securities public interest litigation system, this article focuses on discussing the scope of application of public interest litigation, the selection of suing entities, and the allocation of burden of proof. It aims to enhance the understanding of the public and relevant departments regarding the construction of the public interest litigation system, while highlighting its significant role in protecting the rights and interests of small and medium investors, effectively promoting the protection of public interests and the lawful performance of regulatory authorities in the securities market, and safeguarding the healthy development of the securities market.

Chinese Procuratorial Public Interest Litigation on Personal Information Protection (Part 1)

The Personal Information Protection Law of the People’s Republic of China (hereinafter referred to as Personal Information Law) has been officially implemented on November 1, 2021. The birth of this law embodies the idea of people-centered development and provides Chinese experience and solutions for the personal information protection problems faced by international society. This article focuses on the development of Chinese personal information law and explains the legislative purpose of Personal Information Law to further show seven highlights and two characteristics of it. Also, it puts emphasis on introducing Chinese procuratorial public interest litigation on personal information protection and points out the shortcomings of this existing system with a view to perfecting and developing the system value maximally.

Protecting people with disabilities’ data privacy in government information disclosure: facilitation by procurator-led public-interest litigation

Improper processing of sensitive personal data concerning disabled people in government information disclosure not only violates their privacy rights but also leads to discrimination, stigmatization, and other serious secondary harm, that have long been overlooked. China’s procurator-led public-interest litigation system is a powerful tool for protecting the privacy rights of vulnerable groups. This paper contends that procurator-led public-interest litigation, as a supplement to and support for private-interest litigation, assists the Chinese government in fulfilling its international obligations to protect the right to privacy of disabled people.

Research on Compensation System for Ecological Environment Damage—Taking Ganzi Prefecture of Sichuan Province as an Example

The construction of ecological civilization is a process of sustainable development. Environmental protection extends from individual interests to social public interests, from general tort compensation to environmental public interest litigation and ecological environmental damage compensation, which effectively improves the ecological environment. As the most important natural forest distribution area in Sichuan Province, Ganzi Prefecture is an important part of the ecological protection barrier and “China Water tower” in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River and the Yellow River. It is rich in forest, grassland and wetland resources and has a good ecological environment. This paper mainly makes an empirical study of the ecological environment damage compensation system in Ganzi Prefecture, and puts forward some suggestions for improving the system.

Study on ecological environment damage compensation in China

To provide more theoretical support for improving the ecological environment damage compensation system, this paper discusses policy design and enforcement in China in recent years. A flow chart is summarized to clarify the whole implementation process and extract the characteristics of the policies implemented in China now. An evaluation system that refers to these characteristics is built to measure their pros and cons. This evaluation system is based on six key indicators: official value criteria, the management of compensatory payments, executive efficiency, emergency efficiency, responsibility fulfillment and innovation. Focusing on the field of biodiversity, biodiversity compensatory cases based on their different features from the officially released typical examples are selected to assess the policies. The result shows that performance of the management of compensatory payments is generally poor, and the indicators of executive efficiency and responsibility fulfillment mostly improve over time, while the performance of the official value criteria indicators of administrative public interest litigation and civil public interest litigation are quite different. From the perspective of types, the characteristics of biodiversity cases related to marine resources are more prominent. From the perspective of time, the indicators of emergency efficiency gradually improve over time. From the perspective of policy stages, good design and implementation of policy can bring good effect. Finally, we also put forward suggestions on promoting and improving the ecological environment damage compensation system in China.

Protecting the Habitats of Endangered Species Through Environmental Public Interest Litigation in China: Lessons Learned from Peafowl Versus the Dam

Abstract Green Peafowl stands as a landmark lawsuit in China where environmental NGOs successfully halted a project threatening habitat of endangered species. By examining this case, this analysis evaluates the promise and limitations of China’s civil environmental public interest litigation (EPIL) in protecting habitat. Under civil EPIL’s broad and flexible framework, environmental NGOs can convince the courts that a government-approved project would destroy the ‘biological habitat’ for endangered species and hold project developers accountable. By arguing that the environmental impact assessment (EIA) institution is jointly liable by preparing a flawed report, environmental NGOs can also use civil EPIL as an alternative avenue to challenge the quality of an approved EIA report. However, the timing of judicial intervention, uncertainties of litigation outcomes, the scope of protection, and the court’s attitude towards EIA claims limit the effectiveness of civil EPIL. This analysis highlights the need to address regulatory failures revealed by Green Peafowl.

A Consortium Blockchain-Enabled Evidence Sharing System for Public Interest Litigation

Procuratorates, as the prosecutor in public interest litigation (PIL), need to obtain evidence from other PIL stakeholders including citizens, companies, governmental agencies, IoT monitoring devices and so on. However, the evidence sharing is not smooth due to the lack of secure data sharing and privacy protection during case investigation and evidence collection. Therefore, the authors propose a consortium blockchain-based secure data sharing and privacy protection scheme named PILChain. The involved organizations are connected as peers in PILChain. The safety of uploaded evidence and user privacy can be guaranteed with a fine-grained access control and zero-knowledge identity proof. InterPlanetary File System is introduced to store large evidence files off-chain, further enhancing the data security and system scalability. The security of PILChain is analyzed in terms of access control, evidence confidentiality, evidence integrity, traceability, privacy, and scalability. Last, the authors evaluate the performance of the developed prototype system by implementing PILChain on Hyperledger Fabric.

Using Climate Litigation to Strengthen Advocacy Strategies: The Life After Coal Campaign in South Africa

AbstractActivists in South Africa have a long history of using public interest litigation to realize human rights. The use of litigation is nevertheless contested and has produced rich scholarship exploring how its impact can be understood. This practice note will examine the use of litigation by the Life After Coal campaign in Earthlife Africa Johannesburg v. Minister of Environmental Affairs 2017, 2 All SA 519 (GP) (Thabametsi case). With the ultimate goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, Life After Coal has been campaigning since 2015 to thwart investment in new coal-fired power in South Africa. They successfully used the Thabametsi case to strengthen the use of a variety of other strategies, including protest, media advocacy, economic modelling, and pressure on investors and financial institutions. Although litigation can be painfully slow and resource intensive, in this campaign it was instrumental. Litigation delayed the regulatory approvals required for commercial close. While this was not the purpose of the litigation, its effect was to delay the flow of funds and the start of construction on the project. This in turn created time and space for an advocacy campaign to persuade financiers and investors to withdraw their backing for the project; to undertake the modelling and research required to back up the advocacy campaigns and litigation; and for clean renewable energy to become cheap enough to present a viable alternative pathway to coal. This practice note documents this rare success story and suggests what lessons concerning the use of multiple interweaving strategies it provides for climate activists in the global South.

Research on Gender Discrimination in Contemporary Women's Employment and Countermeasures

As a special team with vitality, knowledge, epochal and pioneering among women, they have the same potential as men. The stage of employment preparation mainly refers to that workers obtain employment opportunities through recruitment, but there are many gender-based discrimination in this process, mainly including explicit discrimination and implicit discrimination. Therefore, this paper makes a further study on the gender discrimination in contemporary women's employment and its countermeasures. By discussing the problems and causes of gender discrimination in contemporary women's employment, this paper puts forward the ideas of public interest litigation and credit system from the legal point of view, establishes an efficient and perfect guarantee mechanism for contemporary women's employment, and finally realizes the protection of contemporary women's equal employment rights. Providing them with professional career counseling, focusing on helping them discover and cultivate their self-potential and creativity when guiding women to make career choices, and solving the problem of female employment discrimination plays a decisive role in improving women's enthusiasm for participating in social construction and promoting population fertility.

Judicial Activism — the Enforcement of Human Rights in India

The most conspicuous feature of the Indian legal system is judicial activism and almost institutionalization of government by the judiciary. This activism is often assisted by activist lawyers, social activists, journalists and several others. The Supreme Court of India through innovative exercise of judicial power was fairly successful in protecting and promoting human rights and this process of creative exercise of judicial power is termed as judicial activism. The means and methods by which the judiciary expands its role is through public interest litigation (PIL). This paper is aimed at incisive analysis of judicial activism and PIL in promoting human rights of the weak and the vulnerable.

Punitive damages in consumer public interest litigation in China: an empirical study

With litigation socialisation development, an increasing number of civil litigation cases have taken on social functions. Against this background, a punitive damages system involving social interests has developed. Since the implementation of China’s consumer public interest litigation system in 2013, the number of cases involving punitive damages filed by procuratorates or consumer associations has steadily increased. These cases have mainly concerned the fields of food and medicinal product consumption. Regarding punishment and deterrence, Chinese judges generally hold a positive attitude towards a plaintiff’s request for punitive damages, which has no obvious correlation with plaintiff type, consumption type, or claim scale. In China, the calculation of punitive damages is related to the consumption field involved in the case. Most judges determine punitive damages in fields of food and medicinal product consumption as ten times the defendant’s total sales amount, and in the general consumption field, three times the defendant’s sales amount, but some judges choose to decide the specific amount at their discretion to avoid excessive punishment and ensure that damages are paid. Additionally, most judges believe that there is no relationship between punitive damages and administrative or criminal fines, or they only consider the defendant’s criminal or administrative punishment as a discretionary circumstance for determining punitive damages. Only a few judges believe that there is a correlation among the three, and advocate punitive damages and administrative or criminal fines to offset each other. Chinese judges have two main tendencies in judging the ownership and management of punitive damages; that is, punitive damages are handed over to the state treasury or allocated to special accounts. In view of judges’ understanding of the social attributes of punitive damages and the influence of the guidance of national documents in recent years, allocating punitive damages to special accounts for safekeeping and use, is becoming a growing trend.

Obligations Erga Omnes (Partes) and the Participation of Third States in Inter-State Litigation

Abstract This article addresses the role of third States in public interest litigation – i.e., ongoing proceedings concerning interests which they share with the international community. It scrutinizes third-State intervention in inter-State cases through the prism of rules and principles arising in public interest litigation, and aims to clarify the limits of such participation. Having synthesized the relevant law and doctrine of intervention practice before the ICJ and other institutional courts, it considers the extent to which third-State interests find expression through Articles 62 and 63 of the ICJ Statute. It examines the invocation of international legal responsibility on the basis of obligations erga omnes and erga omnes partes, as well as the prospect of intervention on this basis. It then identifies and addresses jurisdictional and procedural questions arising in these and other instances of “public interest” intervention. It concludes by envisaging the prospective institutional development of multilateral participation in public interest litigation.

Not Just a Participation Trophy? Advancing Public Interests through Advisory Opinions at the International Court of Justice

Abstract International procedural law remains largely party-oriented and directed at the preservation of individual interests. A tension therefore arises when the ICJ is asked to adjudicate “public interest norms”. Against this background, one might ask whether advisory opinions by the ICJ might serve as a more appropriate forum for protecting and enforcing public interests. Among others, they might prove better equipped for, e.g., clarifying and interpreting public interest obligations without a breach thereof necessarily having already occurred, or in the case of breaches by multiple parties. However, among the generally low numbers of requests for opinions by the ICJ so far only two can be classified as “traditional public interest litigation”. Recent initiatives on “community-oriented” interests have not (yet) moved forward, leaving their true potential open for debate. The article focuses on the ICJ’s procedural framework in advisory proceedings and its suitability as a forum for enforcing public interests. The argument is made that while indeed several rationales can be identified which make this procedure a seemingly well-suited format for public interest litigation, the filing of requests is often subject to political hurdles and dependent on the overall perception of the Court’s exercise of its judicial function. This is rounded off by a discussion of different proposals and an assessment whether these might lead to a strengthening of the Court’s competence when it comes to serving as a forum for “public interest litigation.”

Enforcing Law Through Authoritarian Environmentalism? State and Non-State Actors in China's Environmental Public Interest Litigation

Numerous studies have examined China's authoritarian environmentalism, with a focus on policy-making and implementation. We argue that law enforcement should also be investigated as a crucial stage. Specifically, we examine environmental public interest litigation (EPIL) and analyse a novel dataset of 7010 EPIL court judgements from 2015 to 2020. We find that state prosecutors dominate EPIL activities, while the role of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) is strictly limited. We also show great variations in EPIL lawsuits filed by state prosecutors across provinces, indicating high local discretion over environmental law enforcement. Lastly, we doubt whether the great number of EPIL outputs from state prosecutors will produce significant environmental outcomes, because they tend to target low-hanging fruit, in contrast to the more challenging and environmentally profound EPIL cases initiated by NGOs. We highlight the value of using the authoritarian environmentalism framework to contextualise debates surrounding the development of EPIL in China.

The PRC’s New Approach to Deterring Pangolin Crime and the Concept of Criminal Incidental Civil Public Interest Litigation

Pangolin crime in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is high due to the demand for pangolins as food and as a component of traditional medicine in Chinese culture, and the large financial benefits accrued by those involved in the illegal pangolin trade. To better combat wildlife crime and protect wildlife interests, in recent years the PRC has begun to vigorously implement a mechanism of public interest litigation to redress environmental torts. In the criminal sphere, public interest litigation operates in the form of ‘criminal incidental civil public interest litigation’, with the prospect of damages and a public apology serving as a powerful substantive and moral deterrent to criminal acts that harm pangolins. However, as a new litigation system, criminal incidental civil public interest litigation still faces several problems, such as an inadequate basis in procedural law, a lack of interface with the Wild Animal Conservation Law, and confusion over the application of its remedies.

Retracted: Judicial Application of Punitive Damages for Ecological Environment Infringement in Civil Public Interest Litigation.

[This retracts the article DOI: 10.1155/2022/6127388.].

An Unlikely Duet: Public-Private Interaction in China's Environmental Public Interest Litigation

AbstractIncreasing research has been devoted to examining collaborations between public and private actors in environmental regulation under neoliberal democracies. However, this public-private interaction in authoritarian regimes remains understudied. This article seeks to address this gap in the literature through an empirical examination of the interaction between environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and procuratorates in China's environmental public interest litigation. We find emerging complementarity: NGOs focus on new issues and target high-profile defendants to increase the socio-legal impact of their civil litigation, whereas procuratorates increasingly engage in administrative litigation against government agencies. This complementarity is shaped by the different legal opportunities for Chinese NGOs and procuratorates, as well as their respective institutional objectives and capacities. Their divergent regulatory preferences have also fostered synergy between these two actors, allowing them to collaborate on legal experimentation and innovation.