한정위헌청구의 적법성 문제 = Issue on The Legality of Petition for The Decision of Limited Unconstitutionality

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The petition for the decision of limited unconstitutionality under Article 68(2) of the Korean Constitutional Court Act is the mechanism in which the petitioner challenges not the statute itself, but the way the specific statute is interpreted and applied. The Constitutional Court of Korea has been in a position that the constitutional complaint to the statute and the constitutional complaint to a certain interpretation or application of the statute are distinguishable, and only the former is the proper type of constitutional complaint which can be accepted by the Court even though the latter type of constitutional complaint can also be admissible as long as it can be deemed that it is essentially challenging the statute itself. (There has been an increasing sign of change in recent cases implicating that the latter type of constitutional complaint itself is admissible.)
I, however, propose that considering the nature and spirit of constitutional norms control, the latter type of constitutional complaint is a more suitable form which should be accepted in itself. It is not possible to sustain to argue that an interpretation of the statute and the statute itself can be separated in constitutional norms control. Both of them should also be able to subject to constitutional review.