刑事附带民事诉讼赔偿范围限制的制度逻辑

根据《刑事诉讼法》及其司法解释的规定,附带民事案件判决原则上不支持原告对精神损害抚慰金、死亡赔偿金与残疾赔偿金的请求,这构成了对附带民事诉讼赔偿范围的限制。从历史面向看,赔偿范围限制既是移植苏联法的结果,也是契合计划经济体制的选择。但随着社会经济基础的变化,赔偿范围限制的历史动因逐渐消解,原本的规范意图不复存在。然而,作为政策制定者的最高人民法院不仅没有放弃前述限制,反而通过司法解释不断加码,造成了刑事与民事规范之间的体系矛盾。从现实面向看,赔偿范围限制的逻辑是以扩增“以刑促赔”机制效度为手段、以促进非诉制度适用为落脚点展开的,其目的在于更好地实现司法治理效果。在当前制度环境下,如果承认有效治理的优先性,就只能维持对赔偿范围的限制。欲兼顾纠纷解决与诉权保障,在保证有效治理的前提下取消赔偿范围限制,唯一出路是构建全覆盖的被害人国家司法救助制度。

This article discusses the historical causes,theoretical contradictions and operational logic of the compensation restriction in criminal incidental civil action,providing an overall explanatory framework for understanding the institutional pattern of compensation restriction in criminal incidental civil action and its normative context.First,the scope of compensation in criminal incidental civil action was restricted to“material damages”by the 1979 Criminal Procedure Law,which was a direct consequence of the transplantation of Soviet law in form,but determined by the economic base in substance at that time,when the existence of the unit system and the ration system made it neither feasible nor necessary to implement full compensation for civil tort.Subsequently,with the deepening of reform and opening up,a tort liability system was constructed based on civil norms and the principle of comprehensive compensation under the conditions of the market economy,and the initial motive of compensation restriction has been dissolved,but the criminal norms introduced in succession imposed stricter compensation restriction in incidental civil action,leading to the problem of incomprehensible systemic integration.For the court system facing multiple conflicting goals and having to choose one for action,the relative disunity of the legal order that emerged in theory is merely the price of improving the effectiveness of judicial governance in practice:narrowing the scope of compensation will reduce the amount of compensation awarded.The smaller the object of execution,the less difficult it is to be enforced,while the higher the execution rate,the easier it is to settle the case.In fact,the compensation restriction largely upholds the logic of serving the non-litigation system rather than the litigation one:it can strengthen the application of the principle of“stimulating compensation through sentencing leniency”and improve the defendant’s willingness and ability to compensate,while the significant reduction of litigation proceeds will prompt more victims to choose mediation and reconciliation to obtain actual compensation no less than the amount awarded,which helps the court to persuade the parties to reach and fulfill the compensation agreement,thereby completely resolving the dispute and finally achieving a relative balance of interests of all parties.The current academic consensus is to abolish the compensation restriction and apply the compensation standards of pure civil cases to incidental civil action.However,according to the logic that the Chinese court system follows the ethics of responsibility and focuses on effective judicial governance,simply abolishing the compensation restriction in accordance with the requirement of systemic integration will do more harm than good to the macro judicial governance of incidental civil disputes.The only way to abolish the compensation restriction while maintaining effective judicial governance is to build a comprehensive national judicial assistance system for victims.China can take social assistance funds for road traffic accidents as a reference and consider adopting the social assistance fund model to expand funds and provide full compensation to victims.