“Short and concise”... Signs of change within the judiciary

④"No more 'Sirutdeok sentences'"
Seoul Administrative Court's simple language ruling 'eye-catching'
“It will also help improve judicial trust.”

“Even if it did not violate the law, I have a request and request from the plaintiff student.” “It would be difficult to tell a young adolescent student to control his emotions like an adult, right? The judges in this case also had such times, and the same would be true for other adults.”

In January of this year, the 11th Administrative Division of the Seoul Administrative Court (Chief Judge Kang Woo-chan) ruled in favor of the plaintiff in a lawsuit to cancel dispositions such as service hours, and unlike general cases, 'the contents of the judgment and instructions summarized in simple language for the juvenile plaintiff' were specified in the form of a box in the judgment.

At the time, Chief Judge Kang said, "The person involved in the case is the plaintiff student himself. In order to become a mature adult who can take responsibility for his own life, he must fully know and understand what is happening to him and what the results were, and learn something from it," and did not spare words of advice and encouragement for the plaintiff who will read the verdict beyond the simple sentence. The 11th Administrative Division, led by Chief Judge Kang, was also the first to attempt the 'Easy Read Judgment' for the hearing impaired.

According to Asia Today's coverage on the 7th, the search for a court that will take the lead in easily writing judgments, such as the 'Administrative Department 11', has begun at the court level. The National Court Administration posted a notice on the court's internal Courtnet last month and is recruiting judges to participate in the implementation of appropriate judgments by the 24th. This is good news that came after the launch of this magazine's 'Let's write judgments easily' project series.

In the future, the National Court Administration will focus on △ single cases and appellate cases among civil and family matters (including civil small claims cases) △ cases with relatively low appeal and reversal rates (rentals, third party objections/claim objections, sale proceeds, transfer proceeds, dividend objections) △ cases with a large number of relatively typical cases (delivery and demolition of buildings, cancellation of fraudulent acts, automobile accident damages, We are working on optimization to create concise and easy-to-understand rulings only for lease deposits).

The notice also included an example of 'appropriate civil and domestic affairs judgments' that had been previously discussed. △Writing in a modified or enumerated form instead of a complete sentence △Omitting the description of basic facts and listing only the issues and judgments about them △Replacing basic and acknowledged facts that are not in major dispute with a separate page △Replacing the claims of the parties with titles △If there are many claimed items, organizing them in a table and briefly listing them. It seems that even more creative methods will be discussed based on this.

An official from the National Court Administration explained, "When writing in sentences for completeness, a lot of conjunctions such as 'but', 'but', and 'and' are included, but we plan to make it more appropriate by listing them in report form." He added, "Because there are only subjects and predicates, it will be easier to write and readability will be improved for readers."

In the legal community, it is pointed out that the optimization of judgments that the court is attempting should take into consideration the aspect of improving the public's access to justice in addition to the purpose of reducing the burden of judges' work. Even though there are objective and neutral terms that are familiar to the general public, there is a need to avoid using difficult Chinese terms and establish uniform standards and systems for this.

Attorney Yu-jin Moon (representative attorney of the Judge Law Firm), a former judge, said, "During my time as a judge, while conducting a trial, I said in court that 'the trial has been renewed,' but explained, 'It means that the judge has changed and the trial will be reviewed again.' I also think that it is easier for the general public to understand if the court uses the simpler expression 'rights were taken away' rather than 'rights were taken away'. In the end, the difficult terminology currently used by the court is familiar and easy to understand. “We need to create standards that can be translated into terms,” he said.

In particular, in the case of civil law, the older the law, the more often Chinese characters, etc., remain without revision, making it more difficult for the general public. Therefore, it is emphasized that outdated legal terms should be overhauled legislatively and that judges should make efforts to keep sentences as short as possible in their rulings.

Na-ri Park, a former judge and chief general counsel at Daeryun Law Firm, said, "It is also called a 'Silutdeok sentence,' and it would be good to avoid the paragraph structure that overlaps several sentences (in severe cases, it can exceed one page) in the manner of 'If you put ~point, ~point, ~point, and ~point together, it is judged that ~'."

Attorney Park went on to say, “I think the attempt to write a short and easy-to-understand judgment is very positive,” and added, “I think that if the court makes an effort to write a judgment that takes the people’s position into consideration, it will also help improve the people’s judicial trust in the court.”

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