Judge Wants Reader-Friendly Rulings

An incumbent chief judge criticized the existing method of preparing rulings as too intricate and suggested that an easier and more reader-friendly ruling system be used.

Chief Justice Yi Won-beom of the Daegu Regional Court contributed an article titled “The Current Status of Preparing a Ruling in Civil Cases and Future Direction for Improvement” to the Law Times, a law journal, on March 3, arguing, “Judges should make it easier for laypeople, the end-customers, to understand rulings.”

The judge demanded that rulings be comprehensible for those involved in the cases themselves, saying, “Cases in which either the defendant or the plaintiff does not appoint a lawyer account for 25 percent of civil settlements in courts of first instance, and as high as 70 percent of single-judge cases at courts of first instance.”

He suggested that ordinary language and easy terms be used to explain out user-friendly rulings. For example, he said that references “anamnesis” should be changed to “medical history.” Moreover, he suggested that wordy expressions held over from the Japanese should be simplified.

Judge Yi added, “In small-sum civil suits, where the persons concerned usually handle the cases themselves, people often confuse the text of a judgment with the text of the claim. Therefore, it is necessary to add an explanation next to both the ‘conclusion of the ruling’ and ‘the content of the plaintiff’s claim.’”

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