민법의 일반법적 성질에 기초한 민법개정 제안

This paper begins with the question, ‘It is evident that civil law is a general law of private law. Then, is civil law properly established as a general law?’ Law can be classified into general law and special law when classified by the scope of application. General Law is a law which is applied generally without a special limit in the scope of application while Special Law is a law that is applied limited to a special person, item, action, or place. Special law is legislated to regulate when an exceptional event occurs unexpectedly after the general law is established or when it is not appropriate to apply the general law as it is. Thus, the special law has precedence over the general law and the general law is applied complementally only when there is no regulation in the special law. When such classification is applied, civil law corresponds to the general law of private law. In other words, it is a general private law so it applies generally to anyone who is a human being. In this respect, a commercial law that is subject to businessmen is a special law of civil law. Of course, the classification of general law and special law is relative in that commercial law can also become a general law in terms of laws regarding e-commerce or special commercial law. Although the classification of general and special law is relative, civil law is a general law which cannot become a special law of any other law and thus is a ‘general law of general law’, which forms the basis for all private law. Thus, civil law must maintain its characteristics as a general law. This must be so that it can maintain a systematic status as a law that can be applied as a last resort on a given issue. And such system of private law must be kept in order to easily decide on which law to apply on an issue. However, civil law already has partial regulations that do not fit the characteristics of a general law ever since the legislation of civil law and there were also amendments that do not fit such characteristics during the recent civil law amendments. Such parts must be revised. In order to do so, we will examine the problematic sections of present regulations in civil law keeping in mind the general characteristics of civil law.