Analysis of the Supreme Court Cases in 2023: the Law of Real Rights and the Law of Claims

In this paper, among the major precedents of the Supreme Court on civil matters in the year of 2023, I analyzed the meaning and contents of 7 important decisions (focused on the law of real rights and claims). The Supreme Court explicitly ruled for the first time that in the so-called ‘mutual deprivation of the possession of his/her property,’ the claim for recovery of possession by the preceding encroacher could not be allowed. The Supreme Court repeatedly has held that claims by road site owners to local governments for land handover, road demolition, and traffic closures are, in principle, an abuse of rights. With respect to the claims of unjust enrichment, the Supreme Court also repeatedly states the legal principles of abandoning the exclusive right to use and profit. Although the legal principle is controversial in academia, in practice, it is firmly established as a useful legal principle in determining whether a claim for return of unjust enrichment is accept or not between the road site owners and the local governments. The Supreme Court explicitly ruled for the first time that a third party who acquired ownership after the unauthorized rental act by a person having a right of retention can also exercise the right to demand the extinction of the right of retention. In the past three years, there have been three Supreme Court rulings, including the target judgment in 2023, on issues that have been mainly disputed in academic fields regarding the right to demand the extinction of the right of retention, and it seems that many of the major issues regarding the right to demand the extinction of the right of retention have been settled through precedents. For the second time since 2017, the Supreme Court applied the ‘high probability theory with respect to obligee’s right of revocation’ to determine whether a claim based on continuous product supply contract arising after a fraudulent transfer is a claim protected by the law of revocation of the fraudulent transfer.