사회복지법의 헌법적 쟁점 – 아동복지법, 노인복지법, 장애인복지법 등에 관한 헌법재판소 결정을 중심으로 –

The social welfare acts for the children, the elderly and the disabled have to provide them with the concrete support and benefits to make them live a decent lives and social participation, so to avoid their isolation from the social lives. The obvious imbalance between the institutional purpose and the normative structure is observed. The social welfare acts should, on the one hand, support and protect their recipients in a concrete and result-oriented method. They rely, on the other hand, on the abstract and open-to-discretion regulations with their variety of policy targets. This inherent characteristic of the social welfare acts result in the narrow and insufficient path of the concrete relationship with the individual right and obligation. This problem caused by the characteristic of the social welfare acts in terms of normative structure as well we benefits is more or less unavoidable. The constitutional provisions for the socially weak and the decisions on the relative measurements would motivate to be anew aware of this constitutional concern. However it confronts the functional hurdle from the constitution itself, for the constitutional provisions themselves are not clear in their method and contents to be realized, so they should be made concrete in the process of legislation, administration and execution. In addition the limited possibility of the judicial remedy hitherto in this field worked out negatively for the constitutional litigation. This article aims to critically analyse and evaluate the constitutional decisions on the social welfare acts and so to describe this problems and the normative structure of them.