Damages Law Essentials and Basis Guidance

Author: Zhao Yongshan
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-01-01
Features: Supreme People's Court senior judge once said that in a civil law country like China, the process of judges making decisions is essentially one of finding legal grounds and applying legal reasoning to interpret the law. Many legal experts deeply agree with this. In fact, whether it is judges or other legal professionals, when encountering specific legal issues, the primary tasks they need to focus on are: on one hand, determining the nature and category of the issue in legal theory, and on the other hand, finding relevant legal grounds and, based on this, applying legal reasoning to apply the law and solve the problem. In this sense, current legal textbooks and theoretical works on law are not closely aligned with the actual needs of legal professionals. Other legal practice-related books also have similar issues—either simple interpretations of legal provisions or mere compilations of laws and regulations, failing to fully meet the deep-seated needs of legal professionals. Based on this understanding, we held two expert meetings attended by senior judges and lawyers, fully understanding the actual needs of legal professionals. We then organized nearly 100 legal experts into 18 expert groups based on different legal categories and, over a period of two years, compiled this Advanced Legal Professional Assistant Series. Considering the breadth of coverage and key and difficult issues in judicial practice, the first batch of this series selected 18 commonly used legal categories for separate book compilation. Each volume in the series is structured into two parts: "Essentials" and "Basis Guidance." The "Essentials" section includes questions (main purposes of provisions) set by current legal documents and other difficult issues that may arise in judicial practice. On the surface, these questions may not seem as targeted as Q&A or case-based questions, and some even resemble dry terms. However, these questions are actually the "points" of each legal category, and any issue in practice within a legal category can be categorized under these "points." The content of these questions is not written in the lengthy style of academic monographs or papers, but in the form of expert opinions, concisely explaining legal principles and pointing out issues to be noted in judicial practice. The "Basis Guidance" section lists as comprehensively as possible the specific legal grounds related to each question. In China, legal grounds are multi-layered, including laws formulated by the National People's Congress and its Standing Committee, administrative regulations, departmental rules, and regulatory documents passed by the State Council and its departments, as well as judicial interpretations issued by the Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate. Among these, laws naturally have the highest legal authority. However, some legal provisions are relatively general, and the understanding and handling of many specific issues in practice still require supplementation from relevant grounds issued by administrative and judicial departments. Therefore, the "Basis Guidance" section clearly identifies the names, issuance dates, and issuing departments of all the above grounds and appends the specific provisions applicable to each essential question. (For some larger questions that require referencing the full text of the basis or involve uncommon specialized issues, to save space, we have only noted the names, issuance dates, and issuing departments of the grounds, omitting the specific provisions. Readers can find them in the subsequent specific questions or other legal compendiums.) With the clear framework of the "Essentials" questions, the authoritative opinions of experts on legal principles, and the detailed and specific legal grounds, the complete format of each legal category in the series is formed. We believe that this innovative format for legal books can largely meet the actual needs of legal professionals and will become their convenient and practical reference. It should be noted that due to the wide range of legal categories covered by this series, the workload of compilation was substantial, and the authors involved came from judicial practice departments, teaching, and research sectors, belonging to different industries and professions. Although we strove to maintain uniformity in the compilation format, there are still obvious differences in language style and expression among different books. Additionally, the cut-off date for the materials used in this series is November 2004.