勿輕視政治 - 比例立憲主義를 主唱하며 -

This essay concerns the relation between political process and judicial process. This particular relation is so problematic that people, lawyers or otherwise, have repeatedly expressed the following puzzling statement: “While politics defines law, law regulates politics.” As far as legal interpretation is concerned, this statement can be paraphrased as follows: “Who determines the law?” We are living in a pluralistic contemporary society where diverse and incommensurable values are in competition. People with diverse values compete with one another so that their society’s law can reflect and communicate their own ways of valuing things. A reasonable person would try to support his or her claim with factual and normative arguments which he or she finds convincing from his or her own internal viewpoint. However, there are multiple viewpoints that reasonable people might regard as valid or at least tolerable. Therefore, if each person arrives at a “right answer” of his or her own in accordance with his or her own internal viewpoint, the predictability in law we are seeking is not enhanced significantly. Given the diversity of incommensurable values, it is unlikely that the various answers people would provide in “hard cases” on the basis of their own internal views would concur with one another. Hence, law ought to provide as clear guidance as possible by setting up rules that adopt certain ways of valuing things. One of the functions of most positive laws is to coordinate people’s social interactions by setting rules for people to follow when they intend to behave as most other people behave but are uncertain as to how most other people do actually behave. It is the government that issues public, general, clear and prospective rules to provide such guidance because the government is the salient body in society that is usually expected to perform this task. Among the governmental organs, it is the Legislature that is supposed to issue rules. In a democratic society, the Legislature is better situated to decide what its subjects ought to do, which is not always a matter of “knowing what is best,” so to speak. Why? The Legislature is in the most salient position in terms of democratic legitimacy. In other words, all representatives are democratically elected and accountable for their own decisions. Therefore, this essay claims that the Legislature is the first writer of rules. This is typically the case when the authoritative directives are meant to solve a collective action problem, like coordination problems, or in prisoner’s dilemma situations. From time to time, however, people are uncertain about what course of action a given rule indicates, and at such times an authoritative interpretation becomes necessary. Moreover, at such times the question of whose interpretation people should follow in its turn presents a kind of coordination problem, where most people wish to follow whichever authority most other people are likely to follow. This essay claims that the Court is the second writer, rather than interpreter of rules, which implicates a couple of corollary propositions. First, the Court should respect policy decision the first writer, i.e., the Legislature, has made. It is concerning undecided matters that the Court can make its own policy decisions. Second, the Court should have candor so that it can expressly state that it is making its own policy decision when it actually does so. Such candid message can trigger political process where public deliberation takes place about the relevant issues. In sum, this essay proposes the so-called proportional constitutionalism by claiming the following statement: “Decide as much as your democratic legitimacy.”