Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No.10, 2017

Overcoming the Sectoral Nature of Risk Control Law

(Abstract)

Song Yahui

The distinctive nature of the public risks arising from modern industrialization’s effect on the environment, health and security mean that risk control is no longer purely a matter of autonomous private law. Accordingly, civil, criminal and administrative law will need to include public risk in their rapidly developing sphere of action. However, the existence of sectoral legal barriers means that in the tripartite system of Chinese risk legislation, each component operates independently, to the detriment of the coordination or cooperation of risk control tools. Drawing on the systematic interpretative techniques of law and economics allows us to bring the risk management tools scattered through different legal sectors into a unified analytical framework. This will not only help break down the barriers between the different sectors of law but will also systemize and integrate the risk control tools of all the sectors into a “triune” structure. The construction of this legal structure must first create open systems of sectoral law and then build cooperative bridges between them, outside the sectoral legal system, by means of separate legislation for particular industries. Risk legislation hence shows the double variation of “separation” and “integration” of sectoral law.