법원조정센터 운영현황과 발전방안에 대한 연구

Due to the consistent increase of the case number of the conciliation of civil disputes, only the increase of the number of the judge, efficiency of trial procedures or expansion of physical facilities cannot cope with the difficult situations. Furthermore, because of the high importance of the conciliation of the court of a lawsuit among conciliation cases, at present it is actually not in compliance with the purpose of the Civil Conciliation Act and due to no separation of the judge and the conciliator in charge of a trial, there have occurred many problems such as situations that are doubtable about spontaneity and fairness of conciliation and the court started putting efforts to revitalize the conciliation system through such as the establishment of the court’s conciliation center assuming full charge of conciliation in order to improve those problems. Therefore, according to the revision of the Civil Conciliation Act in 2009, the standing conciliation committee was newly established (Article 7-2, 7-4 and Article 10-1, etc.) and the “Seoul Court Conciliation Center” was established in the Seoul High Court to revitalize the conciliation of civil disputes in full scale according to the regulations and conciliation work was executed on Apr. 13, 2009. From this, it expanded nationwide and a case that requests a resolution by the conciliation procedure from the beginning is handled by the conciliation center in principle and even a formal lawsuit case is handled by the center if the justice department judges that it can be solved through conciliation so that it plays a role as a dispute resolution institution. However, even though the problems of the existing lawsuit system are consistently pointed out and there have been studies on its improvements and the court’s conciliation center is operated and the interest in a system to solve disputes from institutions other than the court exists in our country, it seems not to be active very much yet. In the long run, a long period is requested to develop and revitalize our model in ADR (Alternative Dispute Resolution) and it can be possible only when the court’s conciliation center plays its faithful role. Accordingly, lots of interest in the operation of the court’s conciliation center that operates various attempts for the first time in our judiciary history should be paid and institutional development should be made. It is because when the court’s conciliation center settles down well systematically, ADR can be active. Facing around 5 years since the establishment of the conciliation center in 2009 and the introduction of the standing conciliation committee system, we need to recheck the operating situations and development directions of the court’s conciliation center in our own way and because we can reilluminate the meanings as a court attached conciliation system that minimizes the side effects of the conciliation of the court of a lawsuit and enjoys the merits of conciliation, studies on the conciliation system of the court’s conciliation center are desperately required more and more.