On the Application of the Rule of Strengthening Defective Evidence in Civil Litigation

Defective evidence and its corroboration rules are an important part of the civil litigation evidence system, directly related to judicial fairness and procedural efficiency. Defective evidence, due to its deficiencies in authenticity, legality or relevance, needs to be corroborated to obtain evidentiary capacity, which is fundamentally different from illegal evidence that cannot be remedied due to illegal collection. China’s current laws have initially established the concept of defective evidence and allow its probative force to be enhanced through corroboration rules. However, there are still many problems in legislation and judicial practice, such as insufficient detail in the rules, inconsistent application standards, and excessive discretion for judges, which seriously affect the clarification of case facts and the fairness of judgments. The core of the corroboration rule lies in using other evidence to enhance the probative force of defective evidence to meet the legal standards for fact-finding. Corroborative evidence must be authentic, legal, relevant, and independent, and must not have direct or indirect connections with the main evidence. At the same time, the application conditions should be clearly defined, especially when the main evidence has doubts or cannot reach the proof standard alone, corroboration should be used to form a complete chain of evidence to reduce the risk of misjudgment. To improve the corroboration rules for defective evidence in China, efforts should be made from three aspects: legislation, judiciary, and theoretical research. First, the classification and corroboration standards of defective evidence should be refined, especially the requirement for the independence of corroborative evidence. Second, the judicial process should be optimized, and the judges’ obligation to explain, the evidence investigation procedure, and the relief mechanism should be strengthened to improve the transparency and standardization of the application of the rules. Third, for special types of evidence such as electronic data and audio-visual materials, technical corroboration requirements should be clearly defined to ensure their authenticity and re-identifiability. By establishing a scientific and standardized corroboration rule system, the reliability of evidence in civil litigation will be significantly enhanced, and the balance between procedural fairness and efficiency will be easier to achieve, thereby promoting the legalization and fairness of judicial decisions.