미국 형법상 위증죄의 구조와 특징

This study basically focuses on the structure and characteristics of perjury under American criminal law, but its fundamental purpose is primarily to draw on the problems and directions of perjury in Korean criminal law by dealing with the structure and characteristics of perjury in U.S. criminal law, and secondly this paper makes recognize the ‘limits of system-intrinsic research methods’ and the ‘need for extrinsic research’ as a way to complement their limits. As with any other crime or criminal law, it is far more effective to compare it to ours, introducing the structure and characteristics of perjury in other countries, rather than simply pointing it out in recognizing its problems dogmatically. This paper discusses perjury of U.S. criminal law, based on the ‘system-external research method. So, I chose perjury under the U.S. criminal law as a means of doing so. Our perjury crime is not particularly interested by Korean researchers in the respect of criminal law theory. Subjective theory, objective theory, and compromise theory are arguing over the falsehood of statements, but there are few papers on this, because the case law takes the subjective theory and the vast majority of researchers follow the case law's arguments. However, this is no problem if there is no article on this because there is no problem in the subjective theory, but this is big problem if there is no article on this by not recognizing the problem despite having many problems. According to the subjective theory, which are viewed ‘against the memory of the witness’ as false statement, it is contrary to the nature of perjury, in that even if the witness's testimony is not the protection legal interest of perjury, if witness’s statement goes against the witness's memory, perjury will be established. Its reason are primarily grounded in section 152 subsection 2 of Korean Criminal Code, and secondly due to the judge who does not interpret false statements in accordance with the nature of perjury. Unlike our perjury crime, in which the interpretation of the falsehood of the statement is entirely left to the judge, the perjury crime in U.S criminal law. is defined as "when a person who swore to state the truth do intentionally state against his oath an important fact that he did not believe was true.” What this shows us is that the article itself presupposes an interpretation of objective theory, and that only "false statements of important facts" are defined as constituent requirements to prevent false statements that do not violate the protection legal interests of perjury, and that the constituent requirements of perjury are consistent with the nature of perjury. Unlike Korea, in case of U.S., not only ‘witnesses’ but also ‘defendants’ are subject to perjury, and unlike Korea, where there is simply one type of ‘testimony’, in case of U.S., there are many types of ‘declaration’ (without oath), ‘deposition’ (of witnesses outside the court), and ‘certificate’ (of witnesses or defendants in court, etc.). Given that the state's judicial function, which is the protective legal interest of perjury, is violated by anyone making false statements in court, it is not necessary to limit the subject of perjury to ‘witnesses’, and that not just ‘witness’ testimony’, but also testimony, declaration, deposition, and certificate contribute to find out the real truth, they might ultimately aims to pursue the nature of perjury. According to this direction, this article are reviewing the constituent requirements of perjury under U.S. federal law, oath, intention, falsehood of statements, and the seriousness of statements. The two-witness rule was dealt with as an important criterion for confirming the falsehood of statement in the perjury.