Lee says courts must open lower-court rulings to public

President Lee Jae-myung said Monday that courts are moving far too slowly on disclosing lower-court rulings. The judiciary has been "extremely sluggish" in taking a more progressive approach to the issue, he said.

Lee made the remarks while presiding over the 24th Cabinet meeting at Cheong Wa Dae, during a performance briefing by Ministry of Government Legislation chief Jo Won-cheol. "If lower-court rulings are not made public, citizens have no way of knowing what standards the courts use to reach their decisions," Lee said.

Expanding public access to lower-court rulings was one of Lee's campaign pledges during the presidential election.

The directive came as Jo was reporting on the ministry's projects, including a plan to gradually convert the National Law Information Center to an AI-based system.

"From the perspective of the people, rulings, administrative decisions and established precedents should in principle be made public — otherwise citizens cannot know what standards to follow in their conduct," Lee said. "The criteria by which actions and decisions are judged cannot be secret."

He went on to say that the judiciary tends not to inform the public of the standards applied to them.

Lee also drew on his own experience as a lawyer. "The courts are not disclosing rulings — only partial disclosure is happening, and even that is done in a way that is extremely difficult to access. Even when I was practicing as a lawyer, I had a hard time getting to them," he said.

Jo replied that rulings can only be searched at the former Judicial Research and Training Institute building in Ilsan, Gyeonggi Province, and that even there, note-taking is not permitted. Lee responded: "Don't write anything down. Just memorize it. What is this?"

Lee then turned to Justice Minister Jeong Seong-ho and asked about progress on disclosing lower-court rulings. Jeong said the Court Administration Office and the Ministry of Justice's legal affairs bureau "are reaching a significant degree of agreement" and that he would report back soon.