Research Report
Ⅰ. Background and Purpose
□ The hearing system guarantees the public right to participate in the administrative deliberation process prior to making administrative decisions by presenting and submitting materials that justify stakeholders so that it promotes democracy of the administration and helps developing careful and caring administrative measures.
□ However, current hearing practices under Administrative Procedures Act present problems as below:
□ First, current hearing practices fail to consider the importance and repercussions of sanctions. That is, when relevant measures are important or substantially influential, a single presider carries out the hearing, consequently undermining objectivity as well as observation of the hearing results.
□ Second, Administrative Procedures Act dictates that the presider of hearing should be designated among the employees of the relevant government office or those who are qualified for the criteria of the executive order, consequently undermining independence and neutrality of the presider.
□ Third, although Administrative Procedures Act emphasizes protection of the stakeholders’ rights through the hearing system and the importance of presider’s role to protect the rights, it does not include clauses that mandate the relevant government office should provide the presider with sufficient explanations about his/her roles and responsibilities and their importance as well as hearing materials. Thus, some presiders are not well prepared and accordingly, the hearings are operated only for the formality sake.
□ Considering the aforementioned problems, this study pursues legal reforms to enhance the effectiveness and practicality of the hearing system by analyzing details, practices and problems of the hearings executed in accordance with the current Administrative Procedures Act.
□ By doing so, this report aims at strengthening practical functions of the hearing regulations under Administrative Procedures Act, eliminating confusions arising from the hearing system and ultimately, contributing to protecting stakeholders’ rights and promoting administrative democracy.
Ⅱ. Main Content
□ Chapter 2 examines overseas hearing systems, including US, German and Japanese cases.
□ Chapter 3 demonstrates opinions of hearing presiders and/or related government officials about current practices of the system, their awareness of the system’s effectiveness and improvement measures by conducting focus group interview with them.
□ Chapter 4 discusses practices and problems of the current hearing system under Administrative Procedures Act and suggests improvement measures based on the abovementioned overseas legislations and FGI results.
Ⅲ. Expectations
□ Reforming hearing regulations will contribute to enhancing the function of Administrative Procedures Act as a general law.
□ Establishing new clauses that have not been defined by the Act will eliminate confusions arising in the course of operating the hearing system and promote administrative democracy.
□ The improvement measures will also contribute to protecting procedural rights of stakeholders, enhancing observation of law enforcement and deterring unnecessary remedy measures, like administrative appeals and trials.