Environmental Public Interest Litigation: When will it Flourish in China?

Abstract

Research on the issues of public interest litigation started during the 1990s in China. Before that, as Environmental Law developed in China, some scholars had introduced citizen suits, which are popular in American environmental law, in their translation book. For example, a large portion of Environmental Law (1986) introduced cases of American citizen suits, the issues of standing, jurisdiction of the disputes, standards of judicial review and methods of remedies etc. However, since there were no traces of western law tradition in Chinese legal history, the legislations on the civil and administrative litigation were still under construction and the situation of the national legal system poor; consequently research on environmental

public interest litigation in western countries was not appreciated in legal profession.

Thus litigation based on public interest is still viewed as a Utopian doctrine only in text books that teach environmental law, especially in the compositions that introduce American law execution.