주민소환투표 청구의 대상과 사유에 관한 연구

Abstract

This article aims to argue that the most important issue is parties and grounds of the petition in Public Recall Vote under the current Residents Recall Act. First, parties of the petition in recall are the head of a local government and the member of the local council and the superintendent. Also, the parties of recall can not be members of City/Do council and an autonomous Gu/Si/Gun council under the proportional representation system. However, Although they are elected by the proportional representation system, they still have same rights and duties as a member of certain council. It is consistent with the equity. Therefore, parties of the recall should include City/Do councilors and an autonomous Gu/Si/Gun councilors under the proportional representation system excluding ones who are not appointed by election such as public officer by civil service exam because it may be against the constitutional context. Second, as to grounds of the petition in Public Recall Vote, according to the Residents Recall Act, the grounds must be specified in details. However, there are no limitation of the recall claims statutorily. There are two different opinions whether or not causes of the recall should be put in statutory form. This divergence of views is due to nature of the public recall. One is that the recall should be viewed as a political procedures like the constitutional court and majority opinion so it will be desirable not to limit the grounds of the recall statutorily. The other is that even though the recall is a cursory and political procedure, the recall might be exploited due to the political reality of Korea. Thus the causes of the recall are limited by statute law only if the public officer break his/her duties and law such as crime. In my opinion, I agree with the former one. First of all, nature of the recall is a system which makes public officer take not legal liability but political responsibility for his/her political failure or corruption. Second, if causes of the recall are codified, the judgement of court will be needed in order to request the recall and then it will be possible to make a lot of legal issues eventually. Third, although there were 81 cases requested recall vote in the last 10 years, just only 2 cases were accepted as the recall vote and there was a no sign that the recall was politically exploited.