대통령 탄핵사유에 대한 소고 - 박근혜 전 대통령 탄핵결정의 탄핵사유를 중심으로 한 판례평석 -

The impeachment case against President Park Geun-Hye, which was decided on March 10, 2017 was a landmark case decided by the Constitutional Court, involving various alleged violations of constitutional principles such as principle of popular sovereignty, representative democracy, rule of law, and alleged infringements on human rights including freedoms of expression, etc. In that case, the Constitutional Court reached a unanimous decision to remove the president from presidency, while following the ‘grave violation logic’ held in the 2004 President Roh impeachment decision without revealing any new legal logic. However, this time the Court did not cite nor follow the rationale in the Roh precedent, which established an impeachable behavior type “which is threatening the basic order of liberal democracy that also violates the key constitutional principles of democracy and rule of law”. The Constitutional Court only cited the Roh precedent in that a decision to remove an incumbent President from office shall be justified in cases where there is a ‘grave violation of law’ on the part of the President by violating either the Constitution or the Statutes to the degree that the maintenance of the presidential office can no longer be permitted from the standpoint of the protection of the Constitution, or that the President has lost the qualifications to administrate state affairs by betraying the people's trust from the standpoint of public trust. This paper will analyze what factors should be considered when deciding on the existence of the grave violation of law requirement on the part of the impeached president under the aforementioned two standpoints.