The Korea Local Administration Review

The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine the substantive limitations on the scope of local government's enactment power in Korea. All of the Supreme Court's lawsuit cases of local ordinances are classified by several variables and followed by statistical analysis. Result of analysis shows that the councilor- sponsored ordinances are litigated more than the executive-sponsored ones and that the ordinances in the functional areas of general administration, regional development, and council affairs take substantial portion of the lawsuit cases. The result of analysis also presents that the doctrine of preemption and the infringement of executive's authority have functioned as the major limitations in the local legislative process. More than 50% of the lawsuits claiming either the statutory reservation or the infringement of executive's authority were rejected. One interesting finding is that the validity rate of the municipal governments' ordinances is much higher than that of the regional governments'. This is notable and calls for further researches because it is not squared with the general perception on the capacities of the two local councils.
 
□ Keywords : Scope of Local Ordinance, Lawsuit Cases, Legislative Power