소송을 통한 사회변동전략의 한계-미국의 성희롱 소송을 중심으로-

Abstract

After democratization in Korea, social movements of Korea tend to use litigation as a strategic way to achieve their purpose. This is because the political struggle against dictatorship has changed into legal and institutional ways by using the established legal system. However, it would be controversial that it is appropriate for social movements to employ litigation as a strategic way. This paper deals with this issue by discussing feminist movement and sexual harassment litigation in the US. The former section discusses the history of feminist movements and sexual harassment and shows that there are various kinds of criticisms against litigation as a useful way for social change; for example, general scepticism against the effectiveness of litigation, liberalism, and Judith Butler. At this point, the US experience of social movements to eradicate sexual harassment could provide an insight about Korean legal policies against sexual harassment. The point is that we should bear in mind that litigation is simply one of various ways against sexual harassment among various sexual harassment policies. Various programmes to eliminate sexual harassment should be adopted consecutively and simultaneously. It should be also mentioned here that socio-legal studies not only focus on what law can do but also what law cannot do.