미국 주헌법상 환경권에 관한 연구 ― 주헌법 환경권 규정과 판례들을 중심으로 ―

Among 193 member countries of United Nations, 177 countries have the constitutional provisions to protect the environmental right in their national constitutions. The Republic of Korea is one of them. However, there are debates among constitutional scholars on how effective this constitutional environmental right provision is, and the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court of Korea have different positions on this right. In USA, several states have constitutional provisions to protect the environmental right in their constitutions, though their applications and interpretations are slightly different from each other. Thus, this article first reviews the Korean constitutional provision to protect the environmental right, and compares the case laws of the Korean Constitutional Court and the Korean Supreme Court. Then, comparatively for USA, the state constitutional provisions of Illinois, Montana, Pennsylvania, and Hawaii are reviewed and their state court case laws to interpret and apply those provisions are analyzed. Among them, the State of Montana has most positively recognized the environmental right as fundamental constitutional right through their case laws. These positive applications and interpretations of the constitutional environmental right in the state constitutions and their case laws of USA may give a favorable light to apply and interpret the environmental right of the Korean Constitution and courts.