위헌심사기준으로서의 비례원칙

Abstract

The Prohibition of Excessive Restriction or the Proportionality Principle (hereafter as “the Proportionality”) in a broad sense refers to the basic principle or the limitation of legislative activities that the state should abide by in carrying out when it makes laws that restrict the citizens’ basic rights. In other words, laws that restrict the citizens’ basic rights must meet the qualifications of the Legitimate Law Object, the Adequate Mean, the Minimal Impairment, and the Balancing between personal interest and public interest (hereafter as “the Balancing”). The Korean Constitutional Court (hereafter as “the Court”) has so far tended to focus its arguments on the Minimal Impairment in applying the four sub-principles of the Proportionality: the Legitimate Law Object, the Adequate Mean, the Minimal Impairment, and the Balancing. However, the Proportionality is a sequential and step-by-step review structure, and ‘step-by-step review’ presupposes that each sub-principle has its own meaning. If so, the Court’s Balancing review that has been criticized as “an overdose of the Proportionality”, should now be changed. That is, the Minimal Impairment should be limited to the evaluation of “legislative alternatives”, and the degree of restriction on basic rights or the judgment of Endurance Possibility should be moved to the Balancing to make use of the merits of the step-by-step review. These changes also bring the Court on par with the trends of advanced foreign constitutional courts such as Germany (The German Constitutional Court) and Canda (the Canadian Federal Supreme Court). Moreover, by doing so, the Court can correctly establish the criteria of the Proportionality as a reviewing standard of constitutionality.