ABSTRACT
This chapter examines some of the leading decisions of the Constitutional Court in light of the issues raised in this book. It focuses especially on those involving the political process, in which the Court has become a final arbiter of major political conflicts. Government by judges is akin to the Confucian ideal of government by a generalist meritocracy, in which notions of 'remonstrance' may be revitalized in the language of constitutional law. The Court has been especially visible in dealing with the legacies of the authoritarian regime, particularly the National Security Act (NSA) and the Anti-Communist Act. In one notable series of cases in the mid-1990s, the Court was drawn into questions of retroactive justice for the famous 1980 'Kwangju incident,' in which military personnel slaughtered hundreds of non-violent protesters. Such mechanisms previously allowed Korean state capitalism to blur the distinction between the state and private economic activity.
