A day at the Constitutional Court of Korea

Today we visited the Constitutional Court of Korea and it was such a great experience. Once we arrived at the Constitutional Court we were greeted by one of the law clerks. We then watched a short movie on the history and creation of the constitutional court in Korea. It was amazing to see that having been created only a short while ago, 21 years to be exact..the court has accomplished so much in such a short time. Before the creation of the constitutional court in 1988, the idea of a law being unconstitutional was unheard of in Korea.


The constitutional court's main role is to protect the constitution, and the basic human rights of the people. We then had a short presentation from Sunjin Kim, who was a clerk to Justice Goldstone at the Constitutional Court in South Africa and now a clerk at the Korean Constitutional Court for Justice. Mr. Kim explained the difference between court here and in the United States.














One interesting fact is that the Constitutional court of Korea has the ability to dissolve a political party. I thought that was pretty interesting, considering that in the United States, people would be in uproar if the government had the ability to dissolve either the GOP or Democratic party.














The tour then ended with a visit of the Constitutional Court library, which included eastern and western influenced textbook. They even had my civil procedure book and an Emmanual civil procedure supplement. Overall, it was an amazing experience and was very informative.

Cecilia A. Ndounda