摘要：经济法学就其研究对象，理论要素和理论渊源而言，是一门边缘学科或者交叉学科。经济法的产生和发展是对民商法，行政法等传统法律部门的扬弃和超越，是现代法律跨越多个法律部门，又跨越多个学科。
Abstract: Economic law is a marginal or interdisciplinary academic subject, given its object of study, theoretical elements and theoretical origins. The emergence and development of economic law builds on and transcends civil and commercial laws, administrative laws and other traditional legal departments, making the modern laws cover many legal departments and academic disciplines.
关键词：经济法；对象；要素
Keywords: Economic law; Object of study; Element
I Modern economic law system
1. Modern economic law system is conducive to China’s drive to build an all-round moderately well-off society and accelerates the nation’s economic development. First, modern economic law system effectively improves people’s living conditions, ensures full employment, increases real income and ef- fective demand. Second, it expands production and facilitates commodity circulation, and accelerates the development of service trade. Third, it makes sure that China’s economic and social development makes rational use of the world’s resources and protects the environment. Fourth, it ensures trade and economic development among developing countries. Fifth, it establishes an integrated multilateral trading system. Sixth, legal rules set in the legal system balance and coordinate the economic and trade relations in the economic life, so as to ensure the unity between the overall development goals of the society and the objectives and interests of individuals.
2. Economic laws cover all aspects and levels of the economy, without any loopholes or omissions. This is an important condition and a basic feature of a sound and comprehensive economic law system. Specifically, economic laws mainly coordinate the following relations: economic relations concerning decision making during the management of a national economy; economic relations that belong to macro-control, indirect control in particular, during the management of a national economy; economic relations between departments (industries) during the management of a national economy; economic supervisory relations during the management of a national economy; internal corporate management and foreignrelated economic management during the management of a national economy.
3. The governments’ economic powers must be standardized, and their powers and responsibilities must be rec- ognized by law. The composition of the governments’ powers and responsibilities must be scientific, and their legal status must be clear. Clear legal status of government agencies and standardized and scientific economic powers of government agencies are also important features of a sound, comprehensive economic law system. The economic powers of government authorities are the legal reflection of a nation’s role to guide and promote economic development. This power is conferred by law. The governments can not transfer or abuse such power conferred by law. The power comes along with responsibilities. That is to say, the governments enjoy the economic power and are obliged to fulfill their responsibilities at the same time.
4. The legal status, rights and obligations of business entities and consumers must be clearly defined. Business entities and consumers are the most active elements of the economic legal relations. Clear definition of the legal status, rights and obligations of business entities and consumers by law, and implantation of such rights and obligation in practice are also an important feature of a sound, comprehensive economic law system. Modern enterprise system is an important part of the socialist economic system. The operation of socialist market economy should rely and be based on the modern enterprise system.
5. The legal system must be comprehensive, coordinated and systematic. As an important part of the socialist legal system, the economic law system and its sub-systems should be interconnected, coordinated, integrated and
complementary. That is to say, every economic law should be consistent with the Constitution of the nation; local economic laws and regulations should be consistent with the national ones; economic laws and regulations of similar natures should be consistent, so as to avoid conflicts.
6. The legislation process should be further standardized and be more scientific. A standardized and scientific economic legislation process is one of the prerequisites for the establishment of a comprehensive economic law system. The legislature should recover the right to legislate on economic matters. The rights of the legislature should be further clarified and the legislative process should be regulated, in order to further improve the technical level of economic legislation as demanded by the legal civilization.
II Theoretical elements of economic laws
We can fully understand the economic law system only through what economic laws are designed to coordinate. Economic laws aim to coordinate the following relations, which are also the structure of the economic law system.
1. The general theory of economic laws
The general theory of economic laws mainly study basic theories of the economy and the general principles of economic laws. It can be divided into the following sections.
(1) The theoretical bases of economic laws, including the philosophical basis, the economic basis, the political basis, the sociology basis and the jurisprudence basis.
(2) Basic issues of economic laws, including the objects of adjustment, methods of adjustment, status, objectives, basic principles, roles, systems, scope of application, etc.
(3) Main theories of economic laws, including the basic classification (the market players, the economic and administrative entity, and social middle entity), the legislative model, the relations between the standings of the economic law subjects and other related subjects (civil or administrative body), the features, legal standings, legal forms of market players (central and local governments and governmental departments), economic and administrative entities, and all the social middle entities.
(4) Behavior theory of economic laws, including the concept, feature, elements and classification of market response behavior, and the concepts of market regulation, macro-control, etc.
(5) Liability theory of economic laws, including the legislation model of the legal liability in the field of economic laws, the special nature of the combination and application of civil liability, administrative liability, criminal and other legal liabilities, etc.
(6) Reward theory of economic laws, including the legislation model, principles, forms, conditions and procedures in the field of economic laws.
2. Relations of macro-control
As we know, the flaw of “the hand of the market”is that under certain conditions, the disordering allocation and waste of resources would put the economy into quagmire. So there is need for a force above the market to guide the society and the economy.
Views are consistent in the academia regarding the methods of macrocontrol. It is generally believed that the success of China’s recent macroeconomic regulation and control lies in the adoption of a moderately tight fiscal policy and later a proactive fiscal policy, and the full use of the leverage of taxes and bond interest rates. The change from a moderately tight monetary policy to an active prudent monetary policy has used the leverage of bank interest rates and the market liquidity. The two approaches to macro-control has stimulates domestic demand, boosted investment, expanded foreign trade, so that the Chinese economy landed safely and continued to grow healthily. Other legal methods also helped, but lagged behind, resulting in the continuance and expansion of corruption. Therefore, in general macro-control measures are taken in such aspects as industrial policies, interest rate, exchange rate, long, medium and short-term planning, fiscal and tax policy, monetary policy, price policy, regional development policies, import and export policies, and the legalization of such policies.
3. Relations of micro-regulation
Long-term free competition is bound to widen the gap between market players. When the power of some market plays reach to a certain point, monopoly and restricted competition arise. Monopoly is born out of competition and restricts competition. This is the dialectic of the market. As monopoly brings huge profits, people all go for it. At the same time the development of competition inevitably spawns unfair competition, which is over competition. It obviously harms the market mechanism. Both monopoly and unfair competition distort the market’s micro-control mechanism and render the invisible hand of the market ineffective. In the filed of the micro economy, national intervention often target individual cases. Since the monopolizing enterprises are very powerful and unfair competition is rampant, coercive laws and regulations are often adopted, so as to ensure the smooth implementation of the law. This part of the economic laws and regulations are called micro-regulation laws. The essence of micro-regulation laws lies in the exclusion of market barriers, and the maintenance of the micro-order of the economic development.
4. Relations of national participation
National participation refers to a nation’s moves to redistribute the ratios of social investment using the fiscal power, with a view to regulate the macro-economy. From this perspective, we can consider national participation as a spin-off of the macro-control. The reason that it is listed as an independent subject of adjustment of economic laws is that national participation is very important in the economic operation across the world. It is universally true that nations participate in market operations in order to realize macro economic objectives.
5. Relations of market regulation
Some theories include market regulation in macro-control, while others include it in micro-regulation. Actually, it is in line with the practical needs and necessary to single it out for separate studies.
6. Relations of foreign-related control
The above five objects of adjust-
ment vary in terms of importance. Macro-control is the most important. Other relations are all subject to it.
III Conclusions
Of course, there are different system designs from different perspectives and using different research methods. However, we believe that all system designs should have the features of a sound, comprehensive economic law systems mentioned above. At the same time, we should conduct deeper research, broaden the research methods, so as to have more and better system designs and allow the academic study to be based on a broader vision.
(Author: from Heilongjiang Dezhi Law Firm, Harbin, Heilongjiang Province 150000)