<민주법학>과 헌법학 방법론

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the progressive methodology of constitution studies was developed in Democratic Legal Studies(DLS). Relatively little attention was paid to differences between conservative and progressive methodologies of constitution studies. Marxist methodology of constitution studies has thoroughly been ignored, or seen as a rebellious one of an academic fringe group even though it was a very systematic approach to elucidating constitutional matters at that time. Marxist approach against farfetched arguments of anti-democratic mainstream constitutional theories includes: historical or dialectical materialism, idea of base and superstructure, the relative autonomy of the law and disapproval of legal fetishism, and the class struggle. The aim of Marxist approach is to explain why a specifically legal form of the exchange of people is inextricably intertwined with a specifically capitalist form of the exchange of products. With gradual extension of democracy in South Korea since the early 1990s, Marxist theory of law has extended its analysis beyond class inequality to new contexts, including race, gender, globalization and ecological crises. In spite of new approaches for methodology adapting to changed constitutional circumstances, a critical alternative constitutional theory based on Marxist epistemology is presented in DLS. What we need is an empirical understanding of how the constitution works, and Marxist methodology is still relevant to this enterprise.