First, the court organization system in Korea
There are three kinds of courts in Korea: ordinary courts, specialized courts and special courts, which are responsible for adjudication of criminal, civil, administrative, electoral and other legal affairs, as well as real estate registration, census registration and deposit. Ordinary courts include grand courts, high courts and local courts. At present, there are 1 grand courts, 5 high courts and 60 local courts in China. Specialized courts include family courts, administrative courts and patent courts. Special courts include the Constitutional Court and the Military Court.
(1) ordinary courts
Judging from the division of work jurisdiction (that is, the division of judicial responsibilities within the court), the local court, the High Court and the Grand Court are responsible for the first, second and third trials of cases respectively, and the Grand Court is also responsible for the unified interpretation of laws and regulations.
1. Grand Court. The Grand Court is the highest judicial institution in Korea, consisting of 65,438+03 judges, including the president. There are also 20 referee research officers who provide referee assistance to judges according to different professional divisions, mainly responsible for the research and investigation related to the trial and trial of cases. Each judge is also equipped with five assistants who are responsible for the auxiliary work related to the trial of cases. For the convenience of trial, the Grand Court divided 12 justices except the president into three departments, and directly tried cases without professional division. The judgment of the big court is final, and the parties must obey the judgment of the big court and cannot ask for a retrial. The scope of cases accepted by the Grand Court is: (1) cases appealed to the judges of the High Court, the protest court (the protest department of the local court) or the patent court; (2) A case that refuses to accept the judgment or ruling of the High Court, the protest court or the patent court. The Grand Court has an administrative department, which is responsible for personnel, budget, accounting, facilities, statistics, litigation, registration, household registration, escrow, execution, legal investigation and judicial system affairs. The Ministry of Justice and Administration has a director, who is also the Chief Justice (not responsible for specific affairs), and the Deputy Chief Justice is responsible for daily work. The Ministry of Justice and Administration consists of Planning Department, Judicial Policy Research Office, Personnel Management Office, General Affairs Bureau and Construction Bureau. The Planning Department is responsible for budgeting and compiling court funds and submitting them to the National Assembly for deliberation (Korean court funds are uniformly allocated to the Grand Court by the National Assembly), and the budgets of courts at all levels are considered and allocated by the National Assembly; The personnel management office is responsible for the personnel arrangement and judge assessment of the national courts; The Judicial Policy Research Office is mainly responsible for studying and answering various questions of local and high court judges in the trial of cases. The General Affairs Bureau is responsible for the daily administrative work of the court (similar to the General Office of the Supreme Court); The Construction Bureau is responsible for the construction of national courts. The construction of the national court is requested by the local court, reviewed by the big court, and submitted to the Construction Bureau for specific construction.
2. High Court. South Korea is divided into nine provinces, including Seoul Special City and five municipalities directly under the Central Government. However, there are only five high courts in Seoul, Busan, Daegu, Gwangju and Daejeon. The President of the High Court is the head of the High Court. He manages the judicial and administrative affairs of the court and guides and supervises civil servants. The High Court has departments, each of which is composed of a minister judge and several judges, and the minister judge is the presiding judge of the department. The High Court adopts a three-person collegiate system in handling cases. The cases accepted by the High Court include: (1) protest cases against the first-instance judgment of the sole judge of the local court, protest cases against the first-instance judgment of the collegial panel of the local court, the collegial panel of the family court and the administrative court; (2) Cases that refuse to accept the judgment or ruling of the collegial panel of the local court, the collegial panel of the family court or the administrative court. In order to effectively handle the trial business, the Seoul High Court has set up 43 departments by specialty. There are 65,438+0,365,438+0 judges in Seoul High Court, and nearly 20,000 cases are accepted and concluded every year, with an average of 65,438+0,654,38+00 cases tried by each judge.
3. Local courts. Local courts have special civil and criminal departments. There are two kinds of trial organizations: collegiate bench and sole trial. Some local courts also have branches that perform the same functions as local courts. The jurisdiction of the collegial panel of the local court and its branches is: (1) cases decided by the collegial panel to be tried by the collegial panel; (2) Cases in which the subject matter of litigation exceeds 1 100 million won; (3) Non-property litigation, or a case in which it is difficult to calculate the object of litigation, although it is a property litigation; (4) Counterclaim cases tried by the collegial panel or cases involving a third party; (5) Cases of death penalty, life imprisonment, fixed-term imprisonment or fixed-term imprisonment of more than one year; (6) Cases in which judges of local courts apply for withdrawal; (7) Cases that are tried by collegiate panels of local branches according to other laws. In order to facilitate the litigation of the parties, there is also a city and county court under the local court, which performs part of the trial tasks of the local court and does not serve as a trial level. There is only one judge in each city and county court, who is responsible for hearing civil cases (less than 20 million won), reconciliation, supervision and mediation cases, divorce cases confirmed by the Household Registration Law, and cases in which the litigant is detained and fined less than 200,000 won. In order to deal with a large number of cases within the jurisdiction of city and county courts, the courts have hired some mediators, who are selected from teachers, civil servants, doctors and other professionals within their jurisdiction. Mediators are divided into four groups, each group can handle 6 to 8 cases every day, and only when the differences between the two sides are too great will they be handed over to the judge for trial.
(2) Specialized courts
1. Family Court. The Family Court is a special court located in Seoul, with branches and corresponding city and county courts. In other areas, the family affairs department of the local court usually hears family cases of first instance.
2. Administrative court. The administrative court is also located in Seoul, at the same level as the local court. It mainly hears administrative cases stipulated in the Administrative Procedure Law and cases under the jurisdiction of administrative courts stipulated by other laws.
3. Patent court. The patent court is located in Daejeon, at the same level as the High Court. The trial of patent cases is subject to the system of two trials and final adjudication, but patent cases may not be brought directly to the patent court unless they have gone through the trial procedure of the patent court established by the patent office of the administrative organ.
(3) Special Court
The establishment of the Constitutional Court is something to be proud of in the Korean court system. The Constitutional Court ruled on the unconstitutionality of laws and other issues. Summary of trial range: 1. A trial on whether the law proposed by the court is unconstitutional; 2. Impeachment trial; 3. Trial of dissolution of political parties; 4. To hear jurisdiction disputes between state organs, between state organs and local self-government organs, and between local self-government organs; 5. Trial of constitutional petition.
The Constitutional Court has the same rank as the Grand Court and consists of nine judges. The President of the Constitutional Court manages court affairs in a unified way, and guides and supervises his civil servants. The Constitutional Court has 65,438+00 judges and 3 researchers, and also has an administrative department to handle administrative affairs.
It is worth mentioning that the subject of unconstitutional litigation can be the party who thinks that the rights have been violated, or the judge who finds that the existing law is unconstitutional in the process of applying the law. The decision of the Constitutional Court is final. By September 30, 2006, the Constitutional Court had heard a total of 1264 1 cases, including the impeachment case of the President and the case of "marriage with different surnames".
Second, the judge system in Korea.
There are currently about 22,000 judges in Korea. There are four kinds of judges in Korea: the president of the grand court, the chief justice, judges and county and city judges. In the past, South Korea divided judges into seven grades. According to the revised Law on the Organization of Courts, the hierarchical system of judges below the president of the High Court was abolished in principle. In South Korea, becoming a judge requires strict examination and training procedures, and the accumulation of judge experience is an important prerequisite for becoming a judge, presiding judge and judge of the High Court.
(A) the source of judges
Becoming a judge, prosecutor and lawyer generally takes three stages. The first stage is studying in the law department of Keren University. The second stage is to pass the judicial examination. The judicial examination is divided into three times, the first time in the form of multiple-choice questions, and the examination subjects mainly include constitution, civil law and criminal law. The second time is in the form of a discussion question. Examination subjects include Constitution, Civil Law, Criminal Law, Commercial Law, Administrative Law, Civil Procedure Law and Criminal Procedure Law. The third interview mainly examines whether a legal talent has a reasonable sense of national consciousness, historical mission and ethical consciousness, the ability to use professional knowledge, expressive ability and logic. In recent years, about 25,000 people take the judicial examination in Korea every year, and about 1 0,000 people pass the examination. The third stage is to go to the judicial research institute for training. Those who pass the judicial examination will go to the judicial training college established by the Grand Court for two years, mainly studying legal practice knowledge. Those with excellent grades may become judges, while others may become prosecutors or lawyers.
(2) Appointment of judges
Excellent students (within the top 200) of the Judicial Research Institute can apply to the Grand Court according to their own wishes. The Grand Court will appoint reserve judges from the applicants, and then they will all be assigned to local courts all over the country. The term of office of reserve judges is two years. During this period, the reserve judge can't try the case alone, but mainly engages in the investigation and research related to the trial of the case. After the expiration of two years, the judges' meeting composed of all judges will decide whether to formally appoint reserve judges as judges according to their performance.
The appointment of ordinary judges requires the consent of the president of the Grand Court and the unanimous approval of the Chief Justice's meeting. The term of office is 10 year, and can be re-elected. The judge research officer of the Grand Court is selected from the local court judges and appointed by the President of the Grand Court for a term of two years. Except for the President of the Grand Court, 12 justices are recommended by the President of the Grand Court and appointed by the President after personnel inspection by the National Assembly. The investigation into the personnel of the Chief Justice should be broadcast on TV. The term of office of the Chief Justice is 6 years, and he may be re-elected according to relevant laws and regulations. The President of the Grand Court is appointed by the President with the consent of the National Assembly, ranking third among national leaders, that is, after the President and the Speaker of the National Assembly and before the Prime Minister. The term of office of the President of the Grand Court is 6 years and cannot be re-elected.
Judges of the Constitutional Court are appointed by the President. As the person in charge, the President of the Constitutional Court is elected by the President from nine judges with the consent of the National Assembly for a term of three years and can be re-elected. When the President appoints judges to the Constitutional Court, three of them are elected by the National Assembly, three are nominated by the President of the Grand Court, and the President can appoint the other three. Because the Constitutional Court has the nature of a high-level political judicial institution, this practice has the significance of ensuring political neutrality.
Judges of the Constitutional Court are selected from the following persons who have served for more than 65,438+05 and are over 40 years old: (65,438+0) judges, prosecutors and defenders; (2) Persons who are qualified as defenders and engage in legal affairs in state organs, state-owned/public enterprises, government investment institutions and other legal persons; (3) Persons who are qualified as defenders and hold positions of assistant professor or above in recognized universities. The term of office of persons who hold the above two or more positions is calculated cumulatively. The term of office of a constitutional judge is six years and can be re-elected.
The retirement age of the presidents of the Grand Court and the Constitutional Court is 70, and the retirement age of the Chief Justice is 65. The other judges are all 63 years old.
(3) Exchange of judges' posts
Korean judges can communicate between higher and lower courts based on the accumulation of experience. Judges of local courts may be judges of high courts, which may be presiding judges of local courts, and presiding judges of local courts may be presiding judges of high courts. Judges of the High Court need to have more than 65,438+00 years of trial experience. A judge with general 15 years experience can be the presiding judge of the local court, while the presiding judge of the high court needs more than 20 years of trial experience. The President of the Grand Court, the President of the Constitutional Court and the Chief Justice all need more than 20 years' experience. Judges of the Grand Court and the Constitutional Court need to have more than 15 years of trial experience, and judges of local courts return to the original court after serving as judges of the Grand Court for two years.