- Legal certainty. Legal certainty is essential to the principle “treat like cases alike” and legal effectiveness. To guarantee legal certainty, at least two conditions must be met: (1) legal concepts and rules must be as unequivocal and as clear as possible, and different legal rules must not conflict with or contradict one another; and (2) the procedures and criteria for fact finding must be clear and consistent.

- Effectiveness. Each legal rule may have its own functions to fulfil. Lawmakers enact certain statutes because they intend to achieve some goals. A certain legal rule is said to be effective if it achieves its legislative goals in practice. A legal rule is de facto if not de jure invalid if it is ineffective at fulfilling its functions.

- Fairness or justice. As the saying goes, “Ius est ars boni et aequi,” i.e. the “law is the art of good order and justice.” In China, legal scholars also generally recognised that the most important value of the law is to achieve justice. As far as tort law is concerned, most Chinese tort scholars maintain that the basic rationale behind tort law is corrective justice, i.e. tortfeasors ought to restore victims to their pre-accident situations through compensation. In order words, tort law is intended to provide victims with fair and adequate compensation. This goal is also stressed by art. 1 of the Tort Law 2009 as victim protection – “to protect the legitimate rights and interests of parties in civil law relationships.” Therefore, the compensation function of tort law in China is generally considered to be a means to an end – corrective justice.