[Citizen College Season 6] #7 The Constitutional Court and Political Philosophy

On November 24, 2022, the Peace and Democracy Institute and the Seongbuk District Office held the seventh lecture of the Citizen College Season 6  “Politics in Everyday Life.”  In this lecture Dr.  Hyang Mi Oh, Research Professor at PDI, presented on the topic of “The Constitutional Court and Political Philosophy.”

In this lecture, Dr. Oh focused on the  historical and ideological background of the Constitutional Court and the characteristics and meaning of the Korean Constitutional Court system. Constitutional adjudication is a system that judges whether state power violates the constitution. In the United States, there is no provision for judicial review in the Constitution, but there is a judicial review system allowing institutionalization through precedents. In Germany, through the history of the collapse of democracy in the 20th century, Constitutional adjudication has developed into a constitutional court system to protect democracy, the constitution, and guarantee basic rights. Korea has experienced various types of constitutional adjudication systems such as the Constitutional Commission, judicial review system, and constitutional court system during the period of the 1st to 5th Republics, and from the 6th Republic, it had the Constitutional Court system of today. Since then, Korea’s Constitutional Court system has played an important political role in strengthening fundamental rights, overseeing abuse of power, and supplementing legislative power. However, as can be seen in several controversial cases surrounding courts, the government, and the National Assembly, the deepening of the so-called ‘judicialization of politics’ remains a task to be solved in the future.