민사소송 인지제도와 법원 예산

In the current court fee system of civil lawsuit, the filing fee is determined in accordance with the value of the subject-matter in the litigation. It is of a regressive structure in which the fee increases as the value increases, but the rate of increase declines. In addition, compared to the first trial, the appellate trial and appeal trial must pay 1.5 times and 2 times the fee, respectively. Concerns were raised that the fee amount was excessively high, and several alternatives were proposed, focusing on setting an upper limit on the fee amount, abolishing the multiplier by the level of courts, and lowering the rate of increase in the fee. In this study, we estimate the impact on the court fee when introducing these alternatives or the systems of Germany, the United States, and Japan, where the value of the litigation is linked to the fee amount. While the existing literature has focused on the institutional characteristics of the court fee, this study quantitatively analyzes the impact by finding the distribution of the value of civil litigation using the Judicial Yearbook. As a result of the analysis, it was found that the fee amount will decrease when the court fee system of other countries is adopted, except for the German one. It was also found that the drafts discussed in the National Assembly would also reduce the fee amount. Apart from the purpose of enhancing the access to a trial, it is expected that the independence of the court’s budget will be weakened due to the reduced fee revenue.