선거법 위반과 법적 제재

Abstract

A congressman lost his office through the Supreme Court decision discussed in this thesis. He was accused of campaigning earlier and handing out illegal documents. Examination of evidence reveals that the accusation has good reason. But peoples’ opinion to the decision was quite different than what the court expected. Three other statesmen before the court on the same day maintained posts while their violation of election act seemed to be more serious. Some people said that the con- gressman lost his job only because he belonged to unpopular and minor, the Democratic Labor Party. The Supreme Court explained in a informal way that the decision is consistent with criminal procedure act, under which provides 1.5 million won of fine itself is no object of recon- sideration in the Supreme Court. If it is obvious that he committed such crime, the amount of fine can not be changed. I think the Court’s construction of law is to formal and rigid. The Election Act provides that if a successful candidate is sentenced to be guilty of more than 1 million won of fine, he shall be dismissed of his office. And also his political rights are to be restricted for 5 years. The Congressman wanted to main- tain his office and political rights. In this case, the Court should have judged seriously if his loss deserves his behavior. He was forced to appear in a meeting of residents who did not wanted food recycle facility near their houses. They warned that they would campaign against him, if he would not come and promise it in a document form. And it happened just 1 day before the campaign days. The principle of proportionality can be used to balance the outcome with the misdeed in this case. This principle has its ground in Article 37 of the Constitutional Law. To avoid disproportion of penalty among candidates, special appeal court for all the election law case is needed, too.