Judicial Protection of Children’s Civil Rights: The Role of the Civil Code and Civil Litigation Practice

This chapter focuses on the protection of minors’ rights and interests in civil litigation. Centering on the Civil Procedure Law of the People’s Republic of China, and integrating relevant norms from the Civil Code, Law on the Protection of Minors and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, it systematically analyzes the whole-process protection mechanism for minors’ rights and interests in civil litigation, covering the legislative background as well as the pre-trial, trial and enforcement stages. It reveals the “whole-process and multi-dimensional” system for protecting minors’ rights and interests in China’s civil litigation: it not only supports the realization of substantive rights with procedural justice, but also provides special preferential protection in light of minors’ physical and mental characteristics, highlighting the principle of “the best interests of the child” and building a judicial safeguard for the healthy growth of minors.