Administrative organs must secure people's interests: senior judge

Courts across China concluded 733 first-instance administrative public interest lawsuits, excluding environmental and resource cases, between July last year and the end of September this year, with 21 percent resolved via mediation, an official from the Supreme People's Court said Monday.

Cases relating to food and drug safety, State-owned property protection, and State-owned land use right transfer accounted for 14.9 percent, while those on the rights protection of martyrs, minors and women took a less prominent share.

Case distribution by field remained relatively concentrated over the past year, with the above three areas leading, followed by the three rights protection fields. Regional disparities were notable: Hebei province and Anhui?province recorded the most cases, then Henan province and Hubei province, Wang Xiaobin, a first-class senior judge of the SPC's Administrative Tribunal, said at a press conference.

On dispute resolution, a high proportion of cases resulted in judgments confirming illegal administrative acts, revoking such acts or ordering statutory duty performance, Wang said.

He emphasized the judicial rule that "post-litigation performance does not exempt liability for illegality", effectively curbs "speculative or litigation-driven rectification" and sends a clear signal that administrative organs must proactively, promptly and fully fulfill statutory duties involving people's vital interests, instead of acting only after being sued.

To address public welfare damages caused by overlapping or vacant administrative functions or cross-regional or cross-departmental issues, courts have collaborated with procuratorial organs to resolve the dilemma in certain public welfare areas.

Meanwhile, they have effectively linked individual case handling with social governance by analyzing and summarizing universal problems behind frequent similar cases, proposing countermeasures to relevant departments to promote systematic social governance, Wang added.