헌법소원 사건의 효율적 처리에 관한 고찰 ― 지정재판부 권한 강화 방안을 중심으로 ―

The effectiveness and authority of constitutional adjudication can ultimately be guaranteed by the persuasiveness of the argumentations which lie within the reasons of its decision. The deliberation of the Constitutional Court needs to focus on meaningful cases, which enables the Court to deliver more precise argumentations, and in turn makes the judgements of the Court convince other state authorities and promote people’s trust. Such selection of cases is indispensable for the process of Constitutional Complaint. In the process of Constitutional Complaint, reasonable distribution of tasks between full bench and designated bench is needed in order to perform its subjective function of protecting fundamental rights and to fulfill its objective function of clarifying constitutional issues as well. To do this, designated bench should be empowered to dismiss complaints in prior- examination that are non other than abusive claims. Also, it is necessary to authorize the designated bench to deny on the merits the obviously groundless claims. Furthermore, such claims should be barred from the availability of the court-appointed counsel, thus constraining the useless filing of complaints. With these three improvements, the burden of the full bench will be considerably reduced. The demarcation between the full- and designated bench should be that ‘the important, principal matters to the full bench, executing the law established by the full bench to the designated bench’. To ensure the unity of judgements and secure the jurisdiction of the full bench, certain procedural adjustments between the benches that provide them with the means of communications are essential.