헌법과 역사 ― 헌법학의 관점에서 ―

The constitutional law protects the inherent value, and sustains its continuity in the process of the subsumption of the constitutional reality into the norm. It is the sovereign decision of the people and works as the long-term basic order, which should be recomposed in the response to the new situation. In this point of view the constitutional law is characterized as the historical entity. In this historical context the past provides us with the reaching structure to the present, and the present with the perspective for the understanding of the past. The research of the constitutional law is the important material to describe the relation between the constitutional law and history. Here should be applied the historical research method on the one hand. On the other hand legal research method is required to project the present legal issues and problems into the past. The history lies in the various dimensions in the research of the relation between the constitutional law and history. First, the constitutional law directly faces the history. It is the case, when the constitutional law retrospectively refers to the historical moment or historical imperativeness. Second, more generally the constitutional law sustains its continuity in expressing the principles abstractly and concisely, which then contributes to bring the historical proceedings into the constitutional law. The korean constitutional law has the wide spread for the evolutionary composition, because it proscribes the social task in the form of the social basic rights and economic order, and in addition the equality clause requires the social dimension beyond the legal. Accordingly the constitutional research is assigned to project the perception and analysis of the constitutional realities from the viewpoint of the social sciences into the norm, and further recompose the norm based on them. This perspective should be kept in mind also in the comparative constitutional research. The foreign constitutional law and theory should be understood in the background of the relevant history. Then such achievement should be compared in the context of the foreign and inland history and from the perspective of the constitutional function in the historical process. It is the precondition for the usefulness of the comparative constitutional research.