On June 30, 2023, Professor Xiong Zhanglin, the Vice Dean of the Law School at Southeast University, a doctoral supervisor, and a Young Changjiang Scholar of the Ministry of Education,has been invited to deliver an online lecture for the faculty and students of our institution on "The cutting-edge Issues in the Reform of Administrative Penalty Law".Professor Cheng Mai presided over the lecture. Faculty members and students from the School of Law participated in the lecture.

Before the official start of the lecture, Professor Cheng Mai introduced Professor Xiong Zhanglin to everyone. Professor Xiong Zhanglin expressed gratitude for the invitation from the Law School of Nanchang University and Professor Cheng Mai, and provided a brief introduction to the main content of the lecture. In addition to the background introduction, the lecture would mainly focus on four issues: the establishment of penalty types, the addition of subjective fault, the issue oflegal illiterates in administrative penalties law, and the limits of public disclosure of administrative penalty decisions.

In the background introduction, Professor Xiong Zhanglin reviewed the current situation and previous amendments of the administrative penalties law, pointing out that in the over twenty years from its promulgation and implementation in 1996 to 2021, the old version of the administrative penalty law had three characteristics: procedural law, deterrence law, and control law.

After a systematic review of the legislative history of the "Administrative Penalties Law," Professor Xiong Zhanglin focused on interpreting four issues in the revised 2021 version of the law.

The first issue is the establishment of penalty types. Professor Xiong Zhanglin believes that there are two major problems with Article 8 of the old version of the administrative penalty law: a single type, lack of jurisdiction, and lack of standards for inscrutable cases. In response to these problems, Professor Xiong Zhanglin pointed out that compared to the old law, the 2021 amendment added penalty types and stipulated supplementary provisions, which is generally commendable, but the fundamental issues have not been fundamentally resolved.

The second issue is the addition of subjective fault. Professor Xiong Zhanglin stated that this issue is first related to the principle of unity between subjective and objective aspects. In the process of assigning legal responsibilities, both subjective and objective aspects should be considered and unified, rather than focusing on one aspect alone. This principle has been recognized in the fields of criminal law and civil law. However, the old version of administrative penalties law does not have provisions for subjective accountability, only focusing on objective aspects. The reasons for this can be attributed to efficiency goals of law enforcement, technical reasons, the limited humility of administrative penalties, and the distinction between administrative penalties and criminal penalties.

The third issue is how to deal with the ignorant legal illiterates in administrative penalties law. This issue has sparked considerable controversy in practice and is related to the specific implementation of the aforementioned provisions on subjective fault. The unresolved issue is how to understand the legal blindness in administrative penalties or whether legal blindness should be considered in administrative penalties. In response to this, Professor Xiong Zhanglin pointed out that unlike subjective fault, legal blindness refers to errors in legal understanding, while subjective fault refers to errors in factual understanding. Factual misunderstanding can exempt one from liability, but legal blindness cannot be exempted.

The fourth issue is the limits of public disclosure of administrative penalty decisions. There are four main reasons supporting the public disclosure of penalty decisions. First, administrative penalties are public acts because they involve the infringement of public interests caused by administrative violations, so penalty decisions should naturally be made public. Second, administrative penalties constitute government information, which is supported by the majority of government practitioners. Third, administrative penalties target illegal behaviors, and the law does not protect illegal behaviors. Fourth, there are existing institutional arrangements, such as the "Regulations on the Disclosure of Government Information" and relevant provisions of various ministries and local authorities. In response to this, Professor Xiong Zhanglin believes that most administrative penalties involve personal privacy, and the right to public knowledge is not prioritized over the right to privacy. Administrative penalty decisions should be categorized as a special type of government information, and administrative penalties do not have the finality of judicial judgments. Therefore, the demand for the public disclosure of all penalty decisions lacks legal basis. The provisions in the current administrative penalty law regarding the public disclosure of penalty decisions should be interpreted as the principle of non-disclosure, with disclosure being the exception.