On the evening of May 25, 2026, the academic lecture themed "Review and Judgment of the Conditions for Instituting a Civil Action" was successfully held in Conference Room 434, Xingmin Building, Xianlin Campus of Nanjing Normal University. The lecture was specially delivered by Professor Hao Zhenjiang, a professor and doctoral supervisor at the Law School of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics. It was presided over by Professor Martin from the Law School of Nanjing Normal University, with Professor Liu Min, Associate Professor Liu Yun, Teacher Wang Jiamin, Pan Xi (Vice President of Xuanwu District People's Court) and Lawyer Lin Ling from Jiangsu Shicheng Law Firm serving as discussants. Undergraduate, master's and doctoral students of all grades in the college attended the lecture, creating a strong on-site academic atmosphere.

Before the lecture began, Professor Liu Min introduced Professor Hao Zhenjiang's academic experience to the audience. Professor Hao Zhenjiang is an executive director of the Civil Procedure Law Research Association of China Law Society and a member of the Japanese Civil Procedure Law Society. He studied under Professor Chang Yi from Southwest University of Political Science and Law and Professor Katsumi Yamamoto, former president of the Japanese Civil Procedure Law Research Association. Having been deeply engaged in the field of civil procedure law for many years, Professor Hao Zhenjiang has achieved important academic results in the fields of non-litigation procedures and family event procedure law. Professor Martin hosted the lecture, extended a warm welcome to Professor Hao Zhenjiang for his visit and expressed sincere gratitude.
Professor Hao Zhenjiang started with the significance of the conditions for instituting a lawsuit, pointing out that the conditions stipulated in Articles 122 and 127 of the Civil Procedure Law of the People's Republic of China mainly cover three dimensions: parties, courts and litigation claims. The overly strict conditions at the case-filing review stage are a key cause of the "difficulty in filing a lawsuit". There are divergent views in the academic circle: Professor Zhang Weiping holds that the "high-level" conditions for instituting a lawsuit directly lead to the difficulty in case filing, while Professor Duan Wenbo argues from a comparative law perspective that this high-level nature has its historical rationality. Professor Hao Zhenjiang proposed that in the context of Chinese law, the conditions for instituting a lawsuit have the dual functions of "litigation entry requirements" and "judgment requirements". On this basis, he categorized litigation requirements into ex officio investigation matters (such as jurisdiction, party qualification, interest in litigation and repeated litigation) and defense matters (such as arbitration agreements, which require the parties to assert), as well as positive requirements and negative requirements.

Subsequently, regarding the review of litigation requirements and their legal effects, Professor Hao Zhenjiang introduced the normative positions of Germany, Japan and China. German law requires courts to urge parties to produce evidence when there is doubt about litigation requirements; Japanese law, in principle, conducts ex officio investigation and adopts the doctrine of debate for matters with weak public welfare; Article 96 of the Judicial Interpretation of the Civil Procedure Law of the People's Republic of China includes procedural matters into the scope of ex officio investigation, allowing courts to conduct active review on their own initiative. In response to the "high-level" problem, he put forward a reform idea of "hierarchical review": formal and general requirements are reviewed by the case-filing tribunal, while substantive and case-specific requirements are tried by the professional trial tribunals.
As for the legal consequences of the lack of requirements, if the requirements are deficient at the case-filing stage, a ruling shall be made to reject the acceptance or transfer the jurisdiction; if the deficiency is found during the trial, a ruling shall be made to dismiss the lawsuit. If the court ignores the requirements and renders a judgment directly, the parties may appeal to request the dismissal of the lawsuit, and the absence of statutory representation for a person without litigation capacity constitutes a ground for retrial. He also introduced the "procedural self-healing" rule in German and Japanese law — if a party lacks litigation capacity when instituting a lawsuit, the litigation act remains valid if the capacity is restored or the act is ratified in the second instance, which has practical significance for an aging society. Regarding the benchmark time for judging litigation requirements, it is in principle the end of the court debate, but jurisdiction is determined at the time of instituting a lawsuit (constant jurisdiction), and the interest in litigation can be extended to before the judgment is rendered.
During the discussion session, the discussants had in-depth academic dialogues with Professor Hao Zhenjiang. Professor Liu Min stated that Professor Hao Zhenjiang elaborated on litigation requirements in the context of the civil law system, which are the conditions that a court must meet to render a judgment on the merits of a case. In China, it is suggested that "litigation requirements" be renamed "judgment requirements", which can be divided into three categories: judgment requirements related to courts (jurisdiction, absence of arbitration agreements, etc.), judgment requirements related to parties (litigation capacity, party qualification, statutory representation) and judgment requirements related to the subject matter of litigation (justiciability of disputes, interest in litigation, no violation of res judicata). In case of deficiency, a ruling shall be made to dismiss the lawsuit or transfer the jurisdiction.

Associate Professor Liu Yun pointed out that the distinction between litigation requirements and adjudication requirements is a difficult point in civil procedure theory. Starting from the academic divergence between Professor Zhang Weiping and Professor Duan Wenbo on the "high-level" conditions for instituting a lawsuit, Professor Hao Zhenjiang integrated German and Japanese comparative law resources, which not only deepened the understanding of litigation requirement theory, but also provided a demonstration path for academic research from theoretical disputes to institutional comparison.

Vice President Pan Xi combined judicial practice and pointed out that under the pressure of a large caseload and a shortage of judges, if there is no clear guidance from academic theory to specific rules, judges tend to choose procedures according to their own convenience, which will weaken procedural values and impair the substantive rights and interests of parties.

Teacher Wang Jiamin believed that Professor Hao Zhenjiang did not simply support the view of "reviewing requirements first" or "hearing requirements and merits together", but put forward a classified handling idea based on China's national conditions, which was impressive.

Lawyer Lin Ling from Jiangsu Shicheng Law Firm combined her practice experience and noted that it is difficult to grasp the scale of formal review and substantive review in case filing, and Professor Hao Zhenjiang's viewpoint on classification has important reference value.

At the end of the lecture, Professor Martin made a concluding speech. He said that Professor Hao Zhenjiang's lecture not only enabled the teachers and students present to have a clearer understanding of the review of the conditions for instituting a civil action, but also demonstrated how comparative law research can respond to China's local problems. Finally, he expressed his heartfelt thanks to Professor Hao Zhenjiang for his dedicated lecture and the wonderful sharing of all the discussants. The lecture concluded successfully in applause.

Text Source: Hao Junjie
Image Source: Graduate Union of the Law School of Nanjing Normal University