<Abstract>

A Critical Consideration about the Judicature Since 1987

Lee, Ho-Young

Graduate Student, Konkuk Univ.

Since the June Uprising in 1987, Korean democracy has achieved big progress, but has not been firmly settled in society. These situations can be found in the judicial area. For example, the position of the judiciary, including the Constitutional Court, is elevated, while that of the elected power, the legislature and the executive is lowered. In this essay, I want to research into judicialization in terms of the changing power relations since 1987.

For this purpose, I intend to confirm that the judiciary is the keeper of ruling ideology. With this in mind, I reviewed the decisions of the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court concerning 'the National Security Law' and 'the Trade Union and Labor Relations Adjustment Act'. As a result, I could confirm that the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court play an important role in maintaining the ruling ideology. Also, I found that the judiciary is a core decision-maker of the state in important policies. In short, the judiciary has an important feature in justifying and strengthening the position of ruling ideology in a broad sense, but takes part in the national government in a narrow sense.

Among the causes of these situations are the constitutionalism, the constitution of 1987, intensification of conflict between the legislature and the executive, the judiciary's nondemocratic structure and the proliferation of legal ideology, etc. Therefore we should discuss such fundamental questions as how and with what contents we should reconstruct the democracy, including the legal system.

Key Words: constitutionalism, the supreme court, the consititutional court, tendency of case, ruling ideology