민사조정법상 조정위원회의 구성과 역할에 관한 소고

Abstract

The system for the conciliation of civil disputes was designed as a system for the concerned parties to resolve a civil dispute independently by making concession to each other and reaching agreement between them instead of resorting to a court ruling. It has served as a representative system to resolve civil disputes other than rulings since the enactment of Judicial Conciliation of Civil Disputes Act in 1990. With interest in alternative dispute resolutions today, there are high expectations and research efforts invested in the system for the conciliation of civil disputes as a method of resolving a civil dispute through the active participation of the concerned parties. Many researches are being conducted on the conciliation procedures and techniques of civil disputes to activate the conciliation of civil disputes. Focusing on the huge importance of the roles played conciliation agencies in the conciliation of civil disputes, this study set out to review conciliation agencies for civil disputes around a council of conciliation. In conciliation cases for civil disputes, a conciliation judge usually takes charge of conciliation. When there is a request from the concerned parties, a council of conciliation takes the responsibility. A council of conciliation is comprised of one chief commissioner and two or more commissioners. As for the “qualification of a chief commissioner,” the study began by discussing a plan of offering a conciliation chance to individuals other than a judge like in Japan even though there were provisions granting the qualification only to judges in the Judicial Conciliation of Civil Disputes Act. In today's reality of courts, the number of judges prescribed in law is too small to cover even only civil cases on merits, which is why it can be a plan to grant some qualification to outside legal professionals only for the conciliation procedures of civil disputes. If it is difficult to do so with outside legal professionals, it will be worth consideration to expand the work of judicial assistant officials responsible for affairs of relatively dispute nature like decisions to recommend performance today. The study also covered issues related to this idea. The Judicial Conciliation of Civil Disputes Act contains some provisions about the “selection of commissions based on consent between the concerned parties,” which is not put to active use in reality. The study examined plans of expanding the qualification scope of commissions by reviewing their selection within the scope of related provisions. These research efforts aimed to facilitate the activation of civil dispute conciliation by improving the conciliation abilities of a conciliation council eventually and introduce the direction of civil dispute conciliation toward proper resolution methods in which the concerned parties would take the central roles in increasingly growing civil disputes ultimately. In today's situation in which the entire cases of civil disputes continue to rise, resolution based on rulings is not the only answer. There should be ongoing efforts to design and develop a device to resolve a dispute through procedures other than trial such as the conciliation of civil disputes. If judges in charge of conciliation or commissioners appointed by the court try to continue the conciliation of civil disputes through their authority based on their drive and enthusiasm for the conciliation of civil disputes, the perceptions and success rates of civil dispute conciliation will never improve. It is time to review the system for the conciliation of civil disputes seriously in a direction of granting maximum autonomy to the concerned parties and letting them resolve a dispute through the conciliation of civil disputes ultimately to satisfy them. There should be serious reviews of the composition and roles of a conciliation council in charge of conciliation progress in close cooperation with the concerned parties in disputes.