| 67 of the Constitution of PRC empowers the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (SCNPC) to exercise the functions and powers “to interpret the Constitution and supervise its enforcement”, and “to annul those administrative rules and regulations, decisions or orders of the State Council that contravene the Constitution or the law”.In 2004, the SCNPC announced the formation of a new Legislation Review and Filing Office to assist its Legislative Affairs Commission in reviewing regulations that may conflict with the Constitution. But the SCNPC may react to citizens’ proposals “when necessary”, and is not required to inform citizens whether or not it will act on a proposal. So how to awaken the constitutional review in the constitutional text is still an urgent task for Chinese lawyers. Generally speaking, one of the most important functions of constitutional review is to enforce the constitutional value in the whole legal system. But only an unconstitutional judgment can not promote the legal system into constitutional order. Given the special characters of constitutional cases, constitutional adjudicators frequently adopt different modalities of unconstitutional decisions in the procedure of constitutional review to keep balance with the political branch. It is necessary to compare the different constitutional decision modalities in the countries with mature constitutional review system to provide several strategies and projects for our future constitutional review system. In different constitutional review systems, the modalities of unconstitutional decision can be classified into three types: unconstitutional and void decision, mere declaration of unconstitutionality decision, and admonitory decision. Such different modalities which combine legal technique and political wisdom can be the reference to catalyze the effective constitutional review in China. The National People’s Congress system can provide exercising space for the above mentioned legal technique. At the beginning of the constitutional decision in practice, the SCNPC can adopt quasi admonitory decision as a preparatory step, considering the traditional opinions of rejecting criticism base on unconstitutional reason. |
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