정치의 과도한 사법화와 사법국가의 문제

Excessive Judicialization of Politics and Problems of Judicial State

최근 입법, 행정을 포괄하는 정치적 문제들이 정치권 내에서 해결되지 못하고 사법부의 관할로 들어오고 있으며, 이는 사법부의 결정에 정치적 부담을 가중시키고 있다. 사법적 결정에 대한 정치적 평가는 필연적으로 개개 법관의 독립을 위협하게 된다. 이른바 사법농단에 대한 정치적·법적 처리과정에서 사법권도 책임을 져야한다는 의견이 강해지고 있지만, 이는 법치주의의 최후의 보루인 사법권의 독립을 저해한다는 우려도 있다. 그래서 정치의 사법화와 사법의 정치화에 대한 해결 과제는 사법의 독립성과 책임성의 조화라고 본다.

One of the most significant effects of recent social trend has been the transformation of courts into major political decision-making and a corresponding judicialization of politics. Our society is burdened with carrying out `democracy after democratization`. In such a society as ours, the phenomenon of `judicialization of politics` in society is being treated by scholars as an issue of conflict between rule of law and democracy. Many cases of the Constitutional Court of Korea in 2004 has caused a new academic point of view regarding its role and power. As the Court finalized controversial cases of political nature, legal academia commented that the Court started to lead judicialization of politics. The goal of this study is to offer an academic frame for a close examination of judicialization of politics by showing various types of judicialization of politics through a constitutional case study. So, we need a case-by-case approach to evaluate this phenomenon. By this approach, we can find that judicialization of politics would cause the collapse of politics or politicization of adjudication, due to unacceptable and incoherent constitutional arguments, and, at the same time, that it would make vitalization of politics in certain situations.