Zhu Guangxin: Transcending Empiricist Legislation: Codification of the Civil Law

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The current Chinese civil law has been gradually developed in the past thirty years in accordance with the two-step civil legislation strategy aimed at adapting the law to the actual needs of reform and opening up to the outside world. The strong empiricist legislative thinking has led to serious defects in both the internal and external systems of the current Chinese civil law as well as the growing tumor of judicial interpretation in the application of law. The huge number of different kinds of judicial interpretation has posed a serious threat of deconstruction to the civil law. To adapt to the new political and social structure of a political state and civil society that may result from the comprehensive deepening of the reform and the all-round advancement of the rule of law, China should change its guiding ideology of civil legislation from empiricism to rationalism and start the codification of its civil law. To this end, legislators should have a deep understanding of the characteristics of private law and abandon the outdated idea that proactive legislation will restrict people’s freedom of action.