국회의원의 헌법상 의무와 이익충돌

The principle of the representative democracy demands the representatives to act for whole people’s interests. However, the representatives need to act for interests of election district and the party to which he or she belongs. Therefore, these positions of the representatives make the conflicts of interest inevitable. Adding that, there are also other types of conflicts of interest, because the representative can use the position for the private interest in various aspects. Some scholars in the anglo-american tradition consider the relation between the people and the representative as kind of quasi-trust, and they tried efforts to apply the many principles and legal system such as fiduciary duty to check seeking the private interests of the trustee. But as the mandatory authorization in the trust relation cannot be harmonized with the constitutional representative democratic system, not the whole system but the basic idea against conflicts of interest can be applied. For example, the legal theory concerning fiduciary duty can be a useful tool for solving the problem of the representative’s seeking the private interest. On the contrary, it cannot be applied to the problem structural conflicts of interest in the representative system. The reform of election law and local autonomy system can be a useful solution for relieving it.