환경법원 도입논의와 관련한 법제적 고려사항

Typically, environmental issues are complex, extensive, serious, and irreversible. In addition, remedy against environmental damage is highly likely to take lots of time and be defective as it is hard to prove whether environmental damage is intentional or out of negligence, what caused the damage and what is the effect of the damage, and how severe the damage is. As a result, legal action against an environmental issue tends to require lots of money and time and sometimes leads to unnecessary disputes among members of the society. The establishment of the environment court is one of the efforts to overcome the limitations of Korea’s legal remedy system while acknowledging and dealing with the uniqueness of environmental damage. In accordance with the Act, the environment court is established and is exclusively in charge of environmental lawsuits; judges in the environmental court also should be specialized in environmental lawsuits and therefore the time to complete the remedy against environmental damage will be greatly cut down. In this article, to understand discussions over the establishment of the environment court, we’ve talked about the definition of the environment, environmental damage, and environmental lawsuit, the unique characteristics of environmental cases which lead us to establish the environment court, and the point should be considered after the environment court is established.