Recent Decisions of the Korean Constitutional Court on Family Law

Abstract

Until quite recently it was the generally-accepted view in Korea that the Civil Code, considered to fall under the realm of "private law", had little to do with Constitutional law, which was considered a part of "public law". But this view has begun to change as constitutional adjudications have begun to flourish with the inauguration of the Constitutional Court in 1988. Despite the recent developments, the Constitutional Court has rarely directly declared any provisions of the Civil Code as unconstitutional. Before 1997 there were only two Constitutional Court cases dealing with the constitutionality of provisions of the Civil Code, and in both such cases it was declared that the provisions were not unconstitutional.