检察公益诉讼案件范围拓展的实践与反思

Expanding the Scope of Procuratorial Public Interest Litigation: Practice and Reflection

公益诉讼,顾名思义就是为了维护公共利益而提起的诉讼。从理论上而言,所有涉及公共利益的案件都可以纳入公益诉讼的范围,但囿于诉讼功能的局限性和资源的有限性,必须对进入公益诉讼的公共利益进行取舍。现有立法所明确列举的四大领域,就是取舍之后的部分公共利益。为此,公益诉讼案件范围拓展的关键在于如何选择公共利益,谁有权来选择公共利益。从实践来看,一方面地方人大通过出台专项决定的方式对本省公益诉讼案件范围进行拓展;另一方面以最高检出台的指导案例和典型案例为指引进行“等外”拓展。然而,从规范层面分析,公益诉讼制度作为一项新增诉讼制度,应当遵循法律保留原则,即公益诉讼案件范围的拓展仅有两种途径:一是通过制定单行法或修改单行法的方式实现拓展;二是由有权主体对行政诉讼法和民事诉讼法中“等”字进行解释。地方人大出台的决定只能在有权主体作出的解释范围内进行具体规定,而不能突破解释的范围。

Public interest litigation,as the name suggests,is a type of lawsuit initiated for the purpose of protecting public interests.In theory,all cases involving public interests can be included in the scope of public interest litigation,but due to the limitations of the litigation function and the availability of resources,it is necessary to prioritize and select public interests that qualify for public interest litigation.The current four areas clearly listed in the existing legislation are the results of the trade-offs.Therefore,the key to expanding the range of public interest litigation cases lies in how to choose and who has the authority to choose the public interest.As a practical matter,the provincial people's congresses expand the scope in their region by issuing special decisions or using the guiding cases and typical cases issued by the Supreme People's Procuratorate.However,as a new type of litigation,the public interest litigation system should follow the principle of legal reservations,which means there are only two ways to expand the scope of public interest litigation:one is to implement or amend separate laws and the second is to interpret the word“et cetera”in the Administrative Procedure Law and the Civil Procedure Law by the competent organ.Decisions issued by provincial people's congresses can only be specified in the range rather than out of the range of interpretation made by the competent organ.