美國 環境法上 市民訴訟制度

Abstract

This short paper explores the citizen suit provisions in the U.S. federal environmental law system. The citizen suit, citizen enforcement of federal environmental law through litigation, has functioned as a watch dog for the environmental groups. Indeed, citizen suits have increased at times when government enforcement has waned. In this fashion, citizen suit have lived up to the model that advocates of public law litigation had for them, namely that citizens would act in the role of “private attorney general.” However, some of environmental groups have abused the citizen suit systems for personal gains and courts has been suffered by overloaded citizen suits. It is said that the citizen suit provisions which allowed citizen to replace administrative is against constitutional basis, separation of powers. This paper proceeds in three parts. the first part is mostly descriptive, and will provide a historical and theoretical background of the citizen suit. The second part overviews the legal structure of the citizen suit provision with CAA which is the first federal environmental law providing citizen suit provision. Finally, the third part looks the current situation of the citizen suit system with 1990's amendment of CWA. This paper provides the outline of citizen suit system but not suggests that it is required to bring the citizen suit system into Korean environmental legal system. It rather offers that it is also possible to active government enforcement action by providing effective document report obligation to industries and open to citizens. As seen in the CWA, CAA, advancing monitoring, reporting, and keeping document system can improve the enforcement of environmental law with adequate certification. The notions of adequacy of public document and its opening to public make it easy for citizen to participate in the environmental enforcement without the citizen suit system.