행정소송의 원고적격에 관한 연구 - 환경행정소송에서 제3자의 원고적격을 중심으로-

Abstract

A person bringing a court challenge to an administrative decision must have standing to seek judicial review. According to Article 12 of the Administrative Litigation Act, the revocation litigation may be instituted by a person having legal interests to seek the revocation of a disposition, etc. So a person seeking judicial scrutiny of agency action had to show that he had a legally protected interest ― that is, one recognized by statute ― that was adversely affected by agency’s decision. The “legally protected interest” test suffered from a number of deficiencies that led to its eventual rejection. It tend to confuse standing issues with merits issues, because the court was required to consider the merits of the plaintiff’s assertions of administrative illegality in order to determine whether he had a sufficient legal interest to confer standing. Litigants have to argue that the Act did not merely clearly codify the existing “legal interest” theory but rather expanded the availability of standing by allowing judicial review whenever the complainant could prove that he was adversely affected. Today specially, in the field of the environmental administrative litigation, it is an issue whether the third party, such as citizens living nearby environmental pollution area and environmental damages area to be effected by the illegal dispositions of administrative agencies, could have a standing to sue. The standing to sue has been admited extensively in foreign country, such as America, England, Germany, France etc. Also, in connection with interpretation of Article 12 of the administrative litigation Act, it is an important issue that the standing of the third party in an environmental administrative litigation is expanded. In recent years, the Supreme Court has expanded the zone of environmental interests protected by interpretation of the basis statute and the statute conserned, and natures, contents, degrees. In consideration of the theory and the judicial precedent, this thesis examine the possibility to expand the standing of the third party by interpretation of “legal interests”, as follows : ― The meaning and the extent of the statute : It means to include not only the basis statute and statute concerned but also procedure statute, moreover the constitutional law. ― The meaning of the legal “interests” : It means a individual, firsthand, concrete interests. But it should be interpreted elastically with the interpretation statute standard theory, the infringement interests theory, the perseverance limit theory and the basic rights standard theory ― The meaning and the limit of the third party : It is no problem for the inhabitants in subject area of environmental impacts assessment and in subject area of prior examination of environmental nature to be admitted the standing. But it is a question that citizens living out of the subject area take the burden of proof for their environmental interests to be infringed.