한국입법과정에 대한 고찰

Abstract

In view of the importance of Parliamentary System and legislation, this paper tries to examine the formal legislative procedure and its actual workings in the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea in order to find out some characteristic features of the legislative process and to suggest some improvements of the current practices. We found that the characteristic features of legislative procedure in the Korean National Assembly are as follows; First, deliberations at the standing committees occupy the central importance in the entire legislative process. Second, those legislative procedures which require open-door sessions have usually been inaccessible by the public due to short notice and lack of practice of public hearings. And thus the sub-committees have been held either at a closed-session, or at a corner of the lobby, excluding many aspirants of observers. Third, judicial review and presidential veto as a check and controlling mechanism on the law making process have played very insignificant role. Fourth, the Executive Branch has the superior position in the legislative process compared with the Legislative Branch; that is, the Executive Branch can exert greater influence in the submission, deliberation, and passage of the bills. Finally, the 38.1% 1,467 laws of the total 3,853 laws promulgated by the president have been propose by non-representatives. This may be one of the reasons why the general public has low respect and trust in the legislative process and the parliamentary democracy.