On “Accountability and Transparency in Civil Justice in Korea”

Beyond the litigants, accountability and transparency benefit the people at large and help guarantee their fundamental rights. Courts must allow people to be tried in compliance with the Constitution and the law. In order to meet such demands, the Civil Procedure Act requires courts to conduct litigation fairly, promptly, and economically (Article 1(1) of the Civil Procedure Act). For trials to be fair, judges must be independent. Litigants must be allowed to check whether the procedures were conducted fairly through a policy of transparency. The Constitution, the Court Organization Act, and the Civil Procedure Act provide various institutional measures which courts and judges can use to fulfill their responsibility to realize justice. We can evaluate the Judges’ nowadays performance in this regard by and large favorable. The fairness of some trials may be undermined by a chief judge’s duty to evaluate judges’ performance or by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court’s abuse of the power to reappoint, assign, or transfer judges. Therefore, continuous efforts must be made to establish objective and detailed criteria for evaluating judges’ performance.