On Other Normative Documents as the Object of Recording and Review

Other normative documents that should be considered do not belong to formal law or substantive law. However, for a long time, many other normative documents in China have the nature of law in essence. At the same time, due to the lack of a system of initial invalidity for normative documents, even other normative documents that are seriously illegal will not automatically lose their validity. All these make it impossible for the other normative documents, which are the object of recording and review, to exclude those that belong to the law in essence, nor to reject those that are seriously illegal. In the future, it is necessary to start from the concept of normativity and incorporate any other normative documents that possess the four characteristics of necessity, restraint, generality, and openness into the scope of recording and review, in order to fulfil the requirements proposed by the Fourth Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China to “include all normative documents in the scope of recording and review, revoke and correct unconstitutional and illegal ones in accordance with the law, and prohibit local authorities from producing and issuing documents with legislative nature”.