Principle of public order and good customs

Public order and good customs are the general names of public order and good customs. The principle of public order and good customs is an important legal principle of modern civil law, which means that all civil activities should abide by public order and good customs. In the modern market economy society, it has the important function of safeguarding the overall interests of the country and society and general moral concepts.

Article 7 of China's General Principles of Civil Law stipulates that civil activities shall respect social morality and shall not disturb social and economic order.

Economic public order refers to the public order that restricts economic freedom in order to adjust the contractual relationship between the parties. Economic public order can be divided into two categories: guided public order and protected public order. Under the condition of market economy, the guided public order is getting smaller and smaller, and the protected public order is gradually occupying an important position. The protective public order related to the protection of the weak in the modern market economy, such as workers, consumers, lessees and debtors, has become the focus of jurisprudence discussion and research in various countries and regions.

Good customs, that is, good customs, are generally considered by academic circles to refer to the general morality necessary for the existence and development of society and country, and the minimum ethical requirements respected by a particular society. It is not difficult to see that good customs are centered on moral requirements. In order to distinguish the principle of public order and good customs from the principle of good faith, the concept of good customs should be limited to the scope of non-trading ethics, and the principle of good faith should be used as the moral criterion of market transactions to perform their respective duties.

Similar to the principle of good faith, the principle of public order and good customs can fill legal loopholes. This is because the principle of public order and good customs contains the factors of judges' discretion and has great flexibility, so it can deal with various new problems in the modern market economy and play an extremely important role in safeguarding the general interests of the country and social moral order, as well as coordinating various conflicts of interests, protecting the weak and maintaining social justice.

Once the people's court encounters some behaviors that disturb social order and violate social morality that were not foreseen by the legislation at that time, and there is no corresponding prohibition, it can directly apply the principle of public order and good customs to determine that the behavior is invalid.