Regulatory Changes and Public Law Issues in the Information Society: Changes in regulatory theory under the pragmatism, a theoretical review of administrative law for better regulation
Authors:   National Public Law Review, Kim Jae Sun 
Published: September 2023

Regulation in an information society goes beyond the discretionary choice of regulatory means based on the superior status of the administrative agency, and a new approach is being made by creating regulatory status and regulatory methods through debate and agreement between regulators and regulators. In other words, as a highly authoritative administrative disposition, there is an increasing demand for regulatory methods that realize the basic values of administrative law, the rule of law, and the principle of guaranteeing basic rights without undermining the value of technological development and information use. The demand for a change in regulatory methods has emerged since the early 1990s, but it has been further promoted through the information technology revolution in the 2000s and the expansion of non-face-to-face services in the COVID-19 era in 2020. However, in the information age, service types have atypical, technology-oriented, and international characteristics, and due to network effects, inevitable monopolies that did not exist have appeared, making it difficult to respond with existing regulatory methods. Until recently, it has been noted that both regulators and regulators are increasingly tired of regulation as legislative solutions are used, administrative issues are discussed to enforce regulatory discretion and choice of enforcement measures. Therefore, regulators, regulators, and service users have all criticized the problem of regulatory gaps in some cases, and in other cases, criticized the problem of inappropriate regulations or excessive regulations on the premise of services before new service types appeared. The recent pragmatist discussion in U.S. administrative law is also considered to be important in the study of regulatory theory under our administrative law in that it considers discussions at the administrative, policy, and economic levels in terms of regulatory rationality, predictability, and administrative procedures. In particular, in the United States, formalist law and pragmatist discussions have been combined in the 1920s, and have been strengthened through the Federal Administrative Procedure Act in 1946 and Chevron docrine in 1984, this trend is becoming more important in regulatory theory in the information age. In the case of Korea, as the self-regulation policy for the platform was declared in 2022, discussions on specific self-regulation methods are mainly taking place. Platform services enjoy network effects and strengthen their status as a group that controls and manages data in a situation where market boundaries are unclear, but in Korea, direct regulation centered on laws can shrink or limit the service model. Accordingly, it is thought that the value of securing rationality and predictability in terms of regulatory content, presenting concise and clear regulatory standards in terms of regulatory form, understanding complex contexts in terms of regulatory design, and protecting basic rights of the people in terms of regulatory ideology should be guaranteed. Furthermore, it is thought that continuous research is needed in terms of administrative law regulatory theory on regulations in the information age, such as platforms, which have shown the limitations of competitive legal discussions.