집단소송제에 대한 연구 및 입법의 최근 동향

Introduction to the global trends of class and collective actions – from a standpoint of systematic competition –

The number of countries that admitted collective litigation or class action have increased a lot last decades. These changes were triggered by the efficiency of American class action system. For this background, many countries pros and cons on admitting American class action system. Corporate persons with experiences have been defending themselves vigorously with the American class action system for a long time. They are trying to find out similar but weak alternative system of class action. Consumers and investors advocates strongly opt–out type of original American class actions. They are strongly upholding deterrence effect of American class actions. Under these circumstances, collective actions are emerging from a few European countries, which is different from American class action in its purpose. Some international conferences are also changing their way to find out alternative type of class actions. In the side of critics, they are suspicious the goal of system ; to weaken class action and get rid of core part of the system? The result is uncertain at now. These phenomena could say ‘systematic competition of collective/class action between common law and civil law.’ Another people says that appropriate systems are usually depends on the cultures of the country, and ADR could be a better way. I’d like to introduce new trends of class and collective action in this paper and help finding out appropriate multi–party litigation type/system in Korea.