Judicial Politics in the Constitutuional Court of Korea

2015 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 25380163
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Politics
• Research Institution: University of Niigata Prefecture (2014-2015); Yamaguchi Prefectural University (2013)
• Principal Investigator: ASABA YUKI 新潟県立大学, 国際地域学部, 教授 (70403912)
• Project Period (FY): 2013-04-01 – 2016-03-31
• Keywords: 憲法裁判所 / 司法制度論 / 比較執政制度論 / 非選出機関 / 現代韓国政治

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Although it seemingly runs counter to the princile of democracy that a bill passed in the legislature by majority vote is declared unconstitutional and void by the court neither elected by nor accountable to the people, it can be conductive to the consolidation of a nascent democracy as is the case with Korea. The Constitutional Court of Korea (CCK) is quite active in judicial review by inter-temporal and cross-national comparisons, which is made possible by the institutional settings in which the non-elected branch of the government is relatively independent from other branches such as the President and the National Asembly. As another strategic player, both CCK as a whole and 9 justices each choose to make a particular bill (un)constitutional by taking into consideration whether it is unified/divided government at the time of each judicial review, by whom each justice was selected, and who proposed and approved the bill in the legislature.

Free Research Field

政治学