Study on cohesion in national standards illustrated by the example of 《Law of the People's Republic of China on protecting against and mitigating earthquake disasters》 article 36

The term " cohesion” does not only mean that two parallel elements at issue are in agreement and mutually compatible, but may also mean that all elements in a certain hierarchical system align well and form an integrated whole. Due to the highly variable and complicated ways of expressing a certain concept that are often involved in legal and other normative texts, proper definition of this term is all the more tricky. Ambiguities in the meaning of this concept will pose directly negative impacts on the authority of laws, execution of national standards, actual result of normative documents, and even administrative person's right of enforcement. Through the in-depth analysis on 《Law of the People's Republic of China on protecting against and mitigating earthquake disasters》 article 36, the writer argues that, to solve the practical problems on cohesion in standards, it includes promoting standardization reform, improving the legal liability, selecting the appropriate expression, using the mature legislative skills, determining reasonably the legal status of the national standard, and protecting fully the rights of administrative person, and so on.