Ahead of Supreme Court Chief Justice Cho Hee-dae’s second regular appointment at the national courts since taking office in December last year, internal conflict within the court is intensifying over the abolition of the ‘Court Chief Justice Candidate Recommendation System’, a key policy of former Chief Justice Kim Myeong-soo.
According to Dong-A Ilbo’s coverage on the 3rd, the National Judges’ Representative Conference, a representative body of judges, posted on the court’s internal network on the 30th of last month, ‘Discussions by the Judicial Personnel System Subcommittee’, saying, “Regarding the ongoing discussion on improving the court president appointment system and the high court judge system. “Concern is growing among judges,” he said. At the same time, “(the representative meeting) has consistently expressed its intention to implement and expand the court president recommendation system,” and added, “It has contributed to the implementation of democratic and horizontal judicial administration and the establishment of a dual system (a method of separating local and high court personnel).” “It is questionable whether there is any basis for withdrawing the recommendation system for the court president,” he criticized.
The court president recommendation system was introduced in 2019 by former Supreme Court Chief Justice Kim with the purpose of decentralizing authority and strengthening the democracy of judicial administration at each level of court. The judges of each court recommend 1 to 3 candidates for the chief court through voting, and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court makes the final appointment. However, there has been constant criticism that active administration, such as encouraging the resolution of trial delays, has become difficult as it has been reduced to a popular vote.
In February of this year, Chief Justice Cho postponed the implementation of the recommendation system and proceeded with the appointment of the Chief Justice due to lack of time during the regular personnel appointment. The Judicial Policy Advisory Committee, an advisory body to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, also recommended in September this year, “The recommendation system for the Chief Justice needs to be improved due to limitations in recommending sufficiently qualified candidates and controversies in the recommendation process,” leading to analysis in the legal community that it is in fact in the process of being abolished. There were a lot.
In relation to this, the Judges’ Representative Conference claimed, “There has never been any empirical data presented showing any difference between courts that implemented the recommendation system and courts that did not implement the recommendation system.” It can be interpreted that the reason the Judges’ Representative Meeting expressed this opinion is because the court president recommendation system served as an opportunity to expand opportunities for court presidents, which were previously concentrated on some judges, such as high court chief judges, to district court chief judges. The Judges’ Representative Council has a high proportion of district court judges.
On the 1st of this month, the Supreme Court announced in a notice issued by Director of the National Court Administration Cheon Dae-yeop (Justice of the Supreme Court) regarding the direction of judicial personnel, “We will prepare a reasonable procedure as soon as possible by referring to the results of the survey” regarding the method of appointing the court president in February of next year. According to a survey conducted by the National Court Administration for judges across the country for five days starting from the 21st oflast month, 1,150 (84%) of the 1,378 judges who responded said, ‘There is a need to improve the recommendation system for the chief judge.’ The Judges’ Representative Conference also pointed out that this survey “was conducted with only the shortcomings of the existing recommendation system presented.” The Judges’ Representative Meeting plans to compile these concerns and continue discussions by placing them on the official agenda for the regular meeting on the 9th of next month.
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![[단독]Conflict within the court intensifies over the abolition of the ‘court president recommendation system’ voted by Myung-soo Kim.](https://image.donga.com/donga_v1/images/img_default.png "[단독]Conflict within the court intensifies over the abolition of the ‘court president recommendation system’ voted by Myung-soo Kim.")
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Reporter Kim Ja-hyun zion37@donga.com