What is it about?
This paper looks at a very practical problem in Chinese administrative lawsuits: can an ordinary person sue over several government decisions in one case, or must they file a separate lawsuit for each decision? In real life, problems like house demolition or land expropriation are rarely the result of a single document. They usually involve a chain of approvals, notices and enforcement measures taken by different offices. However, Chinese courts often apply what they call the “one action, one suit” rule. Under this rule, a plaintiff is told that each lawsuit can only challenge one specific administrative act. If they try to challenge several acts at once, the court may refuse to accept the case at all. The article examines a key Supreme People’s Court case, Ma Shengzhong, where the top court applied the “one action, one suit” rule to dismiss a demolition related lawsuit, but at the same time tried to leave room for exceptions such as closely related facts and litigation convenience. The paper then shows, using nationwide data on court decisions, that after the Ma case was published, lower courts mostly copied the strict part of the rule and used it to dismiss cases, while almost never using the exceptions that were supposed to protect plaintiffs. After explaining why this practice has a weak basis in existing law and in the right to sue the government, the paper suggests a different starting point: “one case, one suit.” Here, “one case” is understood in a flexible way. A single case can cover several related government actions if they arise from the same facts or the same event. To make this workable, the article offers a “pyramid model” that guides judges through three steps: looking first at single actions, then at related facts, and finally at broader events, before deciding whether to keep everything in one lawsuit or split it up. 这篇文章讨论的是一个在中国行政诉讼中非常“接地气”的问题：老百姓起诉政府时，能不能在一场官司里同时起诉多个行政行为。 在现实生活里，很多纠纷都不是一个文件就能说清的。比如城中村改造、拆迁征地、交警执法纠纷，往往牵涉一长串行政行为：立项、审批、公告、强制执行等。对当事人来说，这是一件“事”，但在法院眼里，可能被拆成好几个“行政行为”。 司法实务中逐渐形成了一个被概括为“一行为一诉”的原则，也就是一个行政诉讼案件里，原告只能起诉一个具体行政行为。最高人民法院在2019年公报案例马生忠案（本文称“马案”）中正式肯定了“一行为一诉”，同时又提到在“相关事实”“诉讼便利”等情形下可以例外，并可以通过释明程序引导当事人调整诉讼请求。 问题在于，马案之后，各地法院大量引用“一行为一诉”作为驳回起诉的理由，却很少真正适用这些例外。原本是为了在程序经济和当事人诉权之间“权衡”的规范设计，在基层实践中被用成了一个僵硬的“挡门条”。文章把这种规范与实践的错位称为“马案难题”。 为了解开这个难题，文章主张回到“一案一诉”这一更高位阶的原则，把“案”理解为可以包容“行为、事实、事件”的概念。只要若干行政行为围绕同一事实或同一事件，就有可能在同一“案”下合并受理，而不必机械拆分。为此，文章提出一个三层结构的“金字塔模型”：先看是否可以进行诉之客体合并，再看是否可以进行诉之主体合并，最后再用“不合理起诉例外”和“管辖权限制例外”去做调节。这为法官如何在合并受理与合并审理之间拿捏尺度，提供了一套更清晰的操作路径。
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Why is it important?
The way courts handle multiple government actions in one lawsuit has a direct impact on whether people can effectively challenge unlawful decisions. If courts insist on a rigid “one action, one suit” rule, many citizens with demolition, land, or licensing disputes face a near impossible task: they must identify and slice up a long series of government moves into separate “actions,” file multiple suits, pay multiple costs, and run the risk that parts of their problem are never heard at all. The paper shows that this is not just a technical matter. It effectively narrows the constitutional right to seek relief against the government without clear support in legislation. It also pushes courts to focus on neat procedural boundaries instead of the full story of how a person’s rights were harmed. By exposing the “Ma case conundrum” - the gap between what the Supreme People’s Court said in theory and how lower courts use the rule in practice - the article gives judges and lawmakers a clearer map of what has gone wrong and how to fix it. The proposed “one case, one suit” framework offers a more realistic way to manage complex disputes, protect people’s right to sue, and still keep proceedings manageable. It also provides a model that other jurisdictions can consider when they face similar questions about how to group related government acts in court. 行政诉讼看起来是程序问题，但对当事人来说，往往是“能不能真正告得到”的生死线。如果“一行为一诉”被理解得过于僵硬，当事人面对的是这样的现实： 其一，同一拆迁纠纷要被硬生生拆成多个案子，既要多次起诉，也要多次交费； 其二，有的行为被认为起诉不“合适”或“不单独成案”，干脆就永远没有机会进入实质审理； 其三，结果不是法院判原告输，而是压根不让原告进门，诉权在程序层面被变相“削薄”。 这篇文章的重要性在于，它把“一行为一诉”的法律依据、逻辑漏洞和实务后果系统地摆在台面上：一方面指出它在现行《行政诉讼法》中缺乏明确的法律保留基础，另一方面揭示了它将“合并受理”和“合并审理”混为一谈的风险，实质上缩减了对行政行为的司法审查空间。 更重要的是，文章并非只是批评，而是给出替代方案。通过提出“一案一诉”作为上位原则，加上“金字塔模型”的司法裁量基准，它为法官提供了一个既能控制案件复杂度、又不轻易牺牲当事人诉权的工具箱。 在更宽的视野下，这项研究也有助于构建具有中国主体性的行政诉讼理论：一方面与比较法中的“诉之合并”规则展开对话，另一方面回应了中国在城中村改造、拆迁征地等“多行为一纠纷”的制度现实，让程序规则真正服务于权利救济，而不是成为新的门槛。
Perspectives
I wrote this piece after noticing a pattern in demolition and expropriation cases: people were not losing only on the merits, they were being turned away at the courthouse door. Courts would say “you sued too many actions at once, you need to separate them,” even though the citizen’s real life story was one continuous conflict with the government. The Ma Shengzhong case attracted my attention because it tried to balance a clean procedural rule with some built in exceptions, yet it ended up being read almost everywhere as a green light to dismiss multi action suits. That mismatch between the Supreme People’s Court’s written reasoning and the daily practice of local courts became the starting point for the “Ma case conundrum” that I describe. For me, this article is an attempt to take seriously both sides of the equation. On the one hand, judges need tools to manage complex, multi actor disputes without overloading a single case. On the other hand, citizens need a realistic path to challenge the full chain of government behaviour that affected them. The “pyramid model” and the shift from “one action” to “one case” are my way of giving courts a structured discretion that is less likely to shut people out. I also see this work as a small contribution to a broader question: how can Chinese administrative litigation move from a narrow focus on individual acts to a more complete protection of rights, while still working within the existing legal framework? This article tries to show that even technical procedural rules contain important choices about whose burden we are willing to increase, the judge’s or the citizen’s. 我做这个题目，很大程度上是因为在裁判文书网和实务调研中，反复看到类似的情形：当事人把自己遇到的拆迁或执法纠纷完整讲了一遍，希望法院能把整件事放在一起看。但法院给出的第一反应不是“你有没有道理”，而是“你起诉的行政行为太多了，按‘一行为一诉’不能一起审”，于是案件被退回或驳回。 马生忠案之所以成为切入点，是因为它一方面被最高法院用来“定调”一行为一诉，另一方面又在裁判说理中留出了“例外”和“释明”的空间。理论上的“规范构造”是希望在程序经济与诉权保障之间寻找平衡，可是，在地方法院的裁判实践里，这种平衡很快被简化成一条方便操作的硬规则。我称之为“马案难题”，正是想把这种上下一致“讲一行为一诉、但理解却不一样”的张力挖出来。 在写作过程中，我越来越意识到，这是一个技术规则背后“谁来多承担一点麻烦”的问题。如果一切都按“一行为一诉”拆分，麻烦就集中在当事人身上；如果按照“一案一诉”并辅以合理的司法裁量，麻烦更多落在法官对案件结构的把握上。我的金字塔模型尝试做的，就是帮助法官更有条理地处理合并受理和合并审理，把“不受理”真正保留给少数极端情形，而不是成为常规选项。 对我个人来说，这篇文章也是对中国行政诉讼制度自我反思的一次练习。它试图表明，本土实践中形成的概念，如“一行为一诉”“一案一诉”，不是理所当然，也不是只能照搬。通过法条解释、案例分析和比较法对话，我们有空间重新界定它们的边界，使之更好地回应当代中国行政纠纷的实际样态，并推动行政诉讼在保障公民权利上承担起更实在的角色。
Chanhou Lou
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: "One Action, One Suit" Doctrine and The Ma Case Conundrum in Chinese Administrative Litigation, January 2025, Elsevier,
DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.5854662.
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