As a result of globalization, the barriers between countries are coming down. There is more interaction between countries than ever and mutual understanding and communication have become essential considerations. In such an atmosphere, the Korea Legislation Research Institute has published this book to spread awareness of outstanding Korean law and of its legal system throughout the globe, as the authoritative sources of legal information for other countries. This book explains Korean law in nine chapters that focus on its distinguishing aspects. The nine authors who have participated are all prominent scholars who have contributed their expertise to the project.
Not since the 1960s have U.S. politicians, Republican or Democrat, campaigned on platforms defending big government, much less the use of regulation to help solve social ills. And since the late 1970s, "deregulation" has become perhaps the most ubiquitous political catchword of all. This book takes on the critics of government regulation. Providing the first major alternative to conventional arguments grounded in public choice theory, it demonstrates that regulatory government can, and on important occasions does, advance general interests. Unlike previous accounts, Regulation and Public Interests takes agencies' decision-making rules rather than legislative incentives as a central determinant of regulatory outcomes. Drawing from both political science and law, Steven Croley argues that such rules, together with agencies' larger decision-making environments, enhance agency autonomy. Agency personnel inclined to undertake regulatory initiatives that generate large but diffuse benefits (while imposing smaller but more concentrated costs) can use decision-making rules to develop socially beneficial regulations even over the objections of Congress and influential interest groups. This book thus provides a qualified defense of regulatory government. Its illustrative case studies include the development of tobacco rulemaking by the Food and Drug Administration, ozone and particulate matter rules by the Environmental Protection Agency, the Forest Service's "roadless" policy for national forests, and regulatory initiatives by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Trade Commission.
Streets in Korea rarely go quiet without first having a public demonstration, and Korean citizens are known as seasoned protestors, charting the course of national politics. Between the Streets and the Assembly explores how protest movements have become the prominent mode of democratic politics in Korea, in contrast to political parties in the National Assembly that have lagged behind in partisan representation and accountability. To unpack this political dynamic, this book closely follows three groups of democracy activists who were born in their resistance to military dictatorships but who pursued different methods of democratic representation in postauthoritarian Korea (1987–2020). One group stayed in civil society and organized powerful protests outside formal institutions; another group chose to join existing parties with the aim of reforming legislative politics; and the third group was devoted to forming separate progressive parties to be the agent of transformative agenda. By analyzing the interactive evolution of these three modes of democratic representation, Yoonkyung Lee finds that social movement organizations have been more effective than activist-turned politicians in centrist or progressive parties in creating coordination infrastructures for collective action. Through the practice of organizing national solidarity networks, innovating the methods of mass street demonstrations, and drawing professional expertise to formulate policy alternatives, Korean civic groups have built the capacity to directly shape and alter the course of national politics, unlike activist-turned politicians who remained divided with no common political programs. This study asserts that social movement organizations and political parties develop variable capacities for democratic representation, depending on coevolutionary interactions with each other. The experience of Korean democracy shows social movement groups can be a powerful agent of national politics against the scholarly assumption that views civic associations as narrowly focused, transient organizations. Between the Streets and the Assembly suggests a different possibility of political process, one in which civic groups and participatory citizens, not political parties, are the primary drivers of democratic politics.
This volume is the first in a series of comparative studies that focuses on Korea's legal system and its political institutions under the sponsorship of the Korea Law Center at UC Berkeley Law School. Korea has experienced an astonishing pace of legal reforms within an interval of two generations. The collapse of the authoritarian regime started an irreversible process of democratization that has not yet completed its full course. The papers included in this volume cast new lights on the challenges and institutions that define the substance and the structure of current legal reforms. Although it is not the purpose of this volume to provide a comprehensive report on the current state of Korean law, the selective range of the themes is not a simple happenstance. It is representative of the current political debate which echoes the Korean society's determination to resolve the paradoxes of its legal tradition and overcome the trials of its democratic aspirations.
These essays support the argument that strong and effective presidential leadership is the most important prerequisite for South Korea to sustain and project its influence abroad. That leadership should be attentive to the need for public consensus and should operate within established legislative mechanisms that ensure public accountability. The underlying structures sustaining South Korea’s foreign policy formation are generally sound; the bigger challenge is to manage domestic politics in ways that promote public confidence about the direction and accountability of presidential leadership in foreign policy.
At publication date, a free ebook version of this title will be available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Rules of the House offers a dynamic revisionist account of the Japanese colonial rule of Korea (1910–1945) by examining the roles of women in the civil courts. Challenging the dominant view that women were victimized by the Japanese family laws and its patriarchal biases, Sungyun Lim argues that Korean women had to struggle equally against Korean patriarchal interests. Moreover, women were not passive victims; instead, they proactively struggled to expand their rights by participating in the Japanese colonial legal system. In turn, the Japanese doctrine of promoting progressive legal rights would prove advantageous to them. Following female plaintiffs and their civil disputes from the precolonial Choson dynasty through colonial times and into postcolonial reforms, this book presents a new and groundbreaking story about Korean women’s legal struggles, revealing their surprising collaborative relationship with the colonial state.
