환경 집단소송법 도입의 논의에 대한 검토

Abstract

It is now being debated over the enactment of environmental class action law. In Korea environmental groups and some citizens are strongly asking for enacting the new environmental class action law.In this situation, the 1996 tentative draft bill of Ministry of Justice containing U.S. class action and Germany group actions(Verbandsklage) at the same time are the question in issue.Some groups want to enact after the model of 1996 tentative draft bill of Ministry of Justice, but others want to take after U.S. class action model only. And some groups want to contain administrative litigation also, but others dont want to. Some groups want to enact environmental class action in a separate way, but others want to enact general class action law containing environmental dispute resolutions.In this paper, I reviewed on the draft of class actions about environmental law. I compared also strong and weak point between German group litigation (Verbandsklage) and U.S. class actions. I also took into account Korean legal philosophy and culture.As a conclusion, I recommended U.S. class action model, which is containing administrative litigation also. This is mainly because of modern Korean culture and legal philosophy of ordinary people. In this opinion, group action (Verbandsklage of germany style) can be enacted in the substantive law, which is the case of Korean consumer law.