환경사법(司法)액세스권과 환경단체소송 = Right of Access to Environmental Justice and NGO Lawsuits in the Environmental Law

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Access to environmental justice is the third pillar of the Aarhus Convention, which is set forth in Article 9. Under the Convention, “access to justice” primarily means that the public can use to gain review of potential violating of the access-to-information and public participation provisions of the Convention. However, its more important contribution is to address the enforcement deficit in the whole environmental law. Elements of access to environmental justice include: - Who can bring a challenge? - What can be challenged? - Who can hear a challenge? - What are the remedies once a challege is brought? - How can barriers to access to justice be overcome? The idea of the access of environmental justice can be accepted also in the korean legal system, which generally does not provide for public interest litigation. The reasons for this may be found in the environmental right provided in the Korean Constitution. The concept of the access to environmental justice would play a significant role in actualizing and clarifying the provision of our constitutional environmental right. It is important how might be implemented the access to environmental justice in Korea. For this issue, I suggest the introduction of the public interest lawsuits system (NGO Lawsuits, Verbandsklage) de lege ferenda. Public interest lawsuits, which grant legal standing to recognised environmental NGOs in proceedings before administrative courts, could be an appropriate means to implement this procedural environmental right. Above all, the public interest actions on environmental matters would contribute to make to the enforcement of environmental law in Korea. Therefore, this paper concludes as follows : access to justice is not only a fundamental element in the rule of law, but an essential component in the effective enforcement of environmental law (C. Redgwell, 2007), and NGO lawsuits play an important role also in korean environmental law.