On 19 Jan. 2022, China’s Supreme People’s Court (SPC) issued the “Opinions on Further Promoting the Diversified Resolution of Administrative Disputes” (hereinafter “the Opinions”, 关于进一步推进行政争议多元化解工作的意见).
The Opinions mainly regulates how people’s courts should conduct mediations in administrative disputes. The highlights are summarized as follows.
A) After cases are brought to the people’s courts, the courts shall ask the plaintiff for the cause and background information and assess its risk accordingly.
On this basis, the courts could navigate the plaintiff in choosing appropriate non-litigation resolutions.
B) As for the cases involving administrative compensation and cases in which the administrative organ exercises discretionary power under laws and regulations, if the case is difficult to judge, the court may guide the plaintiff to pre-litigation mediation before the case filing process.
For example, this could apply to the situations when the plaintiff’s action is difficult to enforce, or the administrative dispute is triggered by deep-seated reasons such as misunderstanding of legal norms or emotional confrontation between the parties, or the dispute may affect social stability and thus could be difficult to be resolved by administrative adjudication alone.
Cover Photo by Xianyu hao on Unsplash
Contributors: CJO Staff Contributors Team
