현행헌법상의 '국가'개념에 관한 고찰

One of the main subjects of jurisprudence is the legal representation expressed by language. Terminological expression makeslegal representation interchangeable and the fixation for legal stability and orientation possible. Words indicate experimental or semantic contents which can be reproduced by ‘representation’ and suggest their meaning. The ‘concept’ of any word designates the meaning of the word. One of the starting points of jurisprudence is making concepts clear. We have to understand the concept of the state first in order to understand its Constitution because the constitutional law is one of the most fundamental laws in any state. However, little argument has been existed about the state theory itself in Korea that it has been conceptually difficult to define a ‘state’. This study describes the state theories under the Korean Constitutional law examining the ‘range of meaning’ of the concept of the ‘state’ through investigating how of the term ‘state’ has been conceptualized under the Korean Constitutional Law. This study mainly concludes that: the concept of the ‘state’ is based on the theory of Jellinek's state theory (so-called ‘three-element theory’)in the Korean Constitution. Construing the Korean Constitution, especially in chapter I (“general provisions”), the term ‘state’ encompasses all the three components while other provisions have only one or two component(s). The concept of the 'state' represents a ‘government’ or ‘people’ so that critical differences are possibly caused when we apply the Constitutional law in real. Therefore, we have to thoroughly study the range of the meaning of the concept of the ‘state’