이 글은 공법과 사법의 이념적인 바탕의 차이를 중심에 두고 환경법에 있어서의 공법과 사법의 긴장과 갈등구조에 대하여 분석한 글이다. 이 글은, 먼저, 환경법의 진화과정을 역사적 사실의 재료로 삼고, 환경사법과 환경공법의 발전 단계와, 그 속에서의 환경사법과 환경공법관계가 어떻게 변화하여 왔는가라는 그 변화의 추이를 살펴보았다. 그 다음은, 시대 맥락의 변화 속에서 환경사법과 환경공법간의 관계가 갈등을 빚게 되는 현상에 주의하면서 그러한 갈등적 요소가 무엇에서 비롯되는지 배경적·구조적 원인을 살펴보았다. 그리고, 특히 그러한 갈등이 환경사법시대를 지나서 환경공법시대에 어떠한 양상으로 나타나는지에 주목하였다. 마지막으로, 그러한 환경사법과 환경공법간의 관계변화와 갈등의 양상이 각국이 채택한 법체계에 따라서 어떠한 특수성을 가지고 전개되어 왔는지를 살펴보았다. 이의 구체적 분석을 위하여 두 가지의 다른 법체계, 즉 커먼로를 중심으로 발전되어 온 법체계와 공·사법의 이분론에 기초하여 발전되어 온 각각의 법체계에서의 법발전단계에 따른 환경법의 변화와 발전과정을 구체적으로 살펴보았다. 마지막으로, 최근에 문제가 되고 있는 사례들을 중심으로 이러한 문제들이 우리나라에서는 구체적으로 어떻게 나타나고 있는지를 살펴보았다.
A polluter was sued, based on the private law remedies, for the damages in order to recover suffering from contaminated water or air. However, the polluter acted in compliance with the standards of environmental statutes. In this case, is his or her act justifiable? This question can be controversial to simply answer.
Traditionally, particularly in civil law system, private law has been considered as a separate realm from public law, having logical and systematic completeness and independence within itself. However, as administrative agencies and public law have grown noticeably and enlarged progic sively, they began to penetrate thplegh the cicvice of private law and encplach on iogiracking such belief on the one hand and bcelding et their own logics and legal system on the other hand. The opening environmental case shows the dilemma thad encpmodd bcstatutory d agiwhercpprivate and public environmental laws coexist, is facing.
The idea that draws distinct lines between private and public law tends to have people lose sight on how to solve the problem and ignore the fact that those two realms are correlated and interacting. However, instead of giving up viewing them discrete, this study rather supposed it, but focused primarily on how their relation has been changed and what makes the initiative within their dynamic relation move. It is because the distinction between the two laws is embedded in the fundamentally different ideas supporting private autonomy and public good, respectively (even though either private law or public law often failed to achieve its ideological goals). Taking these ideological backgrounds seriously, this research aims to analyze what makes them contrasted and conflicting, and to suggest how to handle with such tension.
To achieve this purpose, first, this thesis examined legal evolution process in the environmental law, while putting emphasis on the initiatives between the private and the public environmental law. Secondly, this study analyzed the reasons for differentiating private law from public law, and what makes the legal initiative between them move. Thirdly, this analysis reviewed whether legal system, according to which the relation between private and public law is understood differently, influences how to deal with such tension between the two laws in the environmental law context. To show such review concretely, this research investigated how the environmental law developed its legal theories and legislatures under two different legal systems that are based on public/ private law dichotomy and common law. For this comparison, this study analyzed relevant legal issues in US law and German, Japanese and Korean Laws such as ‘Balancing theory’, ‘Public interest’, ‘Preemption’, ‘No right abuse theory’, ‘Bearable limit theory’ and ‘Vicinal community relation theory’ as exemplifications for each legal system.