Civil and Commercial Litigation and Maritime Law Essentials and Reference Guidance

Author: Tang Qingyang, Editor-in-Chief
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2005-01-01
Features:
A senior judge of the Supreme People's Court 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 view. 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 from a legal perspective, 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, the current legal textbooks and theoretical works on law are not yet closely aligned with the actual needs of legal professionals. Other legal practice-related books also face similar issues—either they provide simple interpretations of legal provisions or merely compile and list laws and regulations, failing to fully meet the deep-seated needs of legal professionals. Based on this understanding, we held two expert discussions 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, categorized by different legal disciplines, and spent two years writing this series of "Advanced Assistants for Legal Professionals."
Considering the breadth of coverage and the key and difficult issues in judicial practice, the first batch of this series has selected 18 commonly used legal disciplines, each written as a separate book. The series is structured into two parts for each legal discipline: "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, summarized and summarized. On the surface, these questions may not seem as targeted as question-and-answer or case-based questions, and some may even appear as dry terms. However, these questions are actually the "points" of each legal discipline, and any issue in practice under a specific legal discipline can be categorized into these "points." The content of the questions is not written as lengthy 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 the questions. The legal grounds in our country are multi-layered, including laws formulated by the National People's Congress and its Standing Committee, administrative regulations, departmental rules, and normative 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 grounds, laws naturally have the highest level of authority. However, some legal provisions are relatively general, and the understanding and handling of many specific issues in practice still require supplementation by relevant grounds issued by administrative and judicial departments. Therefore, the "Basis Guidance" section clearly lists the names, issuance dates, and issuing departments of all the above grounds, and also includes the specific provisions applicable to the essential questions (for some larger questions, or for those that require referencing the full text of the basis or are uncommon specialized issues, to save space, we have only noted the names, issuance dates, and issuing departments of the grounds and omitted the specific provisions; readers can find them in the specific questions later or in 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 discipline 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 assistants.
It should be noted that due to the large number of legal disciplines covered by this series, the workload of writing was substantial. The authors involved came from various sectors, including judicial practice, teaching, and research, belonging to different industries and professions. Although we strive for uniformity in the writing format, there are still obvious differences in language style and expression among different books. Additionally, the cutoff date for the materials used in this series is November 2004.