Abstract: Although the Supreme People's Court has allowed the practice of citing the Constitution in judicial reasoning, it has not yet clarified the conditions and norms for courts at all levels to cite the Constitution in judicial reasoning. Regarding this deficiency, scholars have made in-depth studies and proposed the principle of necessity, extracted practical experience, and constructed specific factual conditions in the field of civil adjudication. Although these explorations are rich in details, they lack a logical thread that can connect them together. Essentially, citing conditions is a 'blocking technique', whose function is to screen suitable cases and determine whether constitutional resources are invested or not. On the basis of combining the public law and fundamental law attributes of the Constitution, citation conditions should be constructed around this core function. To determine whether a case dispute is qualified, a "fact-norm" dual review structure can be adopted: first, it is necessary to determine whether the Constitution, as a public law, can intervene in the relevant dispute at the factual level, and then at the normative level, the condition for applying the fundamental law to "exhaust legal remedies" must be reviewed. In addition, if the parties invoke the Constitution in their claims, the court should also invoke the Constitution to respond.

Key words: court, citing the Constitution, judicial reasoning, conditions, limits