국회 입법과정의 개선방안에 관한 소고 - 국회선진화법의 개정논의를 중심으로 -

The National Assembly Advancement Act adopted in 2012 is characterized by the orientation toward consensus rather than majority rule in the management of the National Assembly. The implementation of this act has paved the way for putting an end to the past practice of ex officio proposal by the Chairman of the National Assembly and for removing the stigma of ‘violent assembly’. In addition, it has made sure that the statuses of the minority parties and minor opinions can be protected by strictly limiting the conditions for the deliberation period designation system so that a bill cannot be submitted to the Assembly plenary session unless a consensus is actually reached between the ruling party and the opposition parties. The act has a positive evaluation in that the principle of the parliamentarism that the political participation of the minorities should be guaranteed and minor opinions respected can be expected to be realized as the limitless debate system (filibuster) has been introduced and the provision has been made that a closure of debate shall require a qualified majority voting of ‘yes’ from more than three-fifths of the enrolled members of the Assembly. However, on the other hand, it is argued that the strict requirements for the deliberation period designation system in the legislative activities of the Assembly have an unlucky possibility of creating a serious problem; by curbing the ex officio proposal, they may prevent a bill in question from being submitted to the plenary session to cause a long-term legislative stalemate in the committee process, which may greatly compromise the legislative efficiency. The Revised National Assembly Act introduces the Agenda Fast Track System as a means of preventing a legislative stalemate in the committee stage, but it also requires a qualified majority voting of ‘yes’ from more than three-fifths of the enrolled members of the Assembly, making it extremely difficult to realize its effectiveness. Though a controversy arises in the academia whether the qualified majority voting regarding the provisions related to bill processing under the Act is in violation of Article 49 of the Constitution, the majority view holds that it is constitutional. The Constitutional Court has recently decided in the case of 2015Hun-Ra1 that the Act's strictly regulating the requirements for the deliberation period designation is justifiable as an exercise of the autonomy regarding the parliamentary procedures of the National Assembly and ruled that the qualified majority voting of ‘yes’ from more than three-fifths as a requirement for Agenda Fast Track System is not in violation of the constitutional principle of majority rule and the qualified majority voting is also a thing that the National Assembly can autonomously choose as one of its parliamentary procedures. Despite the passive attitude of the Constitutional Court, the current Act overemphasizes the consensus system in the management of the National Assembly to make it almost impossible to realize the effectiveness of the legislative processes. In this regard, an institutional complement is needed to enhance and substantiate the legislative activities of the National Assembly. The basic direction of the institutional improvement for the advancement of the National Assembly can be summarized as follows: Firstly, in order to harmoniously realize the democracy and the effectiveness of the legislative processes, consensus requirements for the deliberation period designation system should be softened and those for the qualified majority voting in the Agenda Fast Track System also needs to be moderately softened; secondly, it is important to prevent unconstitutional legislations from being made in the contents of the laws, the results of the legislative activities no less important than the democracy and the effectiveness of the legislative activities; thirdly, to prevent unconstitutional and low-quality legislations as much as possible, a legislation influence evaluation system needs to be actively introduced - a system which evaluates the pre- and post-influences or side effects of the legislations; and lastly, an advancement of the management of the National Assembly cannot be achieved only with the institutional improvements of the legislative processes and the parliament procedures; the members of the Assembly, the members of the National Assembly, should have a new understanding of the nature of the principle of the parliamentarism, and their efforts to establish the western style of discussion and the political culture of compromise should take the precedence over anything else.