예비재판관 제도 및 그 도입 타당성에 대한 연구

Vacancy or absence of constitutional judges(justices) may cause serious problems considering that constitutional decisions have significant impacts on the protection of fundamental human rights, maintenance of constitutional order and the interpretation of constitutional law. A long vacancy of a constitutional justice in recent years highlighted this problem and triggered the discussion of the system of the substitute justice in the Constitutional Court. This study tried to analyze the cases of vacancy and absence of constitutional justices and to examine the criteria for substitute justices such as speciality of the justice, independence, legitimacy, etc. In addition, this study reviewed current strategies to substitute the vacancy and to examined the system of substitute justice. Specifically, this study discussed the objectives and necessity of the system, cases of foreign countries with this system, the limits of the system, and the concrete strategy for the system management such as the number, qualification, selection process, terms, responsibility and rights, so on. Based on the analysis, this study suggested to increase of the number of constitutional justices instead of adopting the system of substitute justice. For example, with increased 12 constitutional judges, 9 judges can be allocated to each case. For this type of circular trial system, it is necessary to revise the constitutional articles related to the constitutional justice.