BRICS Law Journal (Apr 2022)
The principle of justice in tort law in Russia and China
Abstract
The study addresses the main problems of the regulation of tort liability in the context of the implementation of the principle of justice in the legislation and law enforcement practice of the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China. The comparative method of the study revealed critical differences in the provisions of Russian and Chinese tort law. The analysis of the works of domestic and foreign scientists, judicial practice on disputes on compensation for damage, contributed to the formulation of conclusions about the forms of justice in these countries. The authors argue for the dominance of the procedural form of the principle of justice implementation in the Russian legal system, and the distributive form in the Chinese legal system. Both positive and negative sides of both the first and second forms are indicated. The reform of Chinese civil law, which completely changed the legal regulation of tort liability and excluded many controversial provisions of the previously existing law of the People's Republic of China on liability for offenses, required new theoretical studies aimed at evaluating the introduced novelties. The topic of comparing the new tort law of the People's Republic of China and the tort law of the Russian Federation is particularly acute in connection with the objective need for integration of the BRICS member countries against the background of increasing confrontation in the international arena. Optimization of legal norms based on the choice of the most appropriate model for the principle of justice, would improve the effectiveness of the protection of the rights of victims. In particular, the authors come to the conclusion that it is necessary to integrate the Russian and Chinese approaches to the issue of the procedure for determining the amount of compensation for damage and fixing it at the level of the law by identifying clear criteria. In addition, at the level of the law, the possibility of the parties to the tort obligation to agree on the procedure, terms, and amount of compensation (not lower than the minimum stipulated in the law) should be fixed.
