헌법개정론의 원인진단과 개정방안의 실효성에 대한 소고-헌법연구자문위원회의 보고서를 중심으로-

Some problems with current constitutional politics can be solved not only by way of constitutional revision but also legislative reform or changes in political culture which plays a substantial role in the working of constitutional arrangements. Given that, the premise to the specific arguments for constitutional revision may be that they are envisaged to respond to the cause of problems imbedded in the target constitutional institutions and the alternatives to the present system are more effective than other means such as legislative solution. Without such practical implication, arguments for constitutional revision cannot easily acquire public support. By taking this line of thought as a underlying idea, this essay aims to review practical implication and effectiveness of various proposals suggested by the Final Report of the Advisory Commission on Constitutional Revision for the Speaker of the National Assembly, open to the public on August 2008. The thrust of the recommendations of the Report are three-fold. First, the Bill of Rights should be reorganized in the way of being supplemented by new freedoms and rights such as the right to life and security, the basic right to information, and so on. Second, constitutional structure of government should be reformed in the direction of lessening president's power, for example, by changing the form of government from current five-single term presidency to semi-presidential or premier- presidential system. Third, judicial system should be democratized and rationalized by adopting new institutions and changing the formation of the judiciary including the Constitutional Court. Proposed judicial reforms include the repeal of recommendation power of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court for his associate justices when there is vacancy, the introduction of abstract norm control, the transfer of jurisdiction of election suits from the ordinary courts to the Constitutional Court. In the course of critical review on these proposals in terms of their effectiveness, the author comes to a conclusion that change of judicial system is the very field that yields the most effective result among these reform agenda while other fields are based upon false premises or for them constitutional revision is not the only means to achieve the envisaged effect.