In Korean society, although the term law and emotion is ambiguous in concept, it is frequently used when the current national issue, especially the issue, has emerged as a legal issue and has become the subject of controversy among members. Neverthele ...
In Korean society, although the term law and emotion is ambiguous in concept, it is frequently used when the current national issue, especially the issue, has emerged as a legal issue and has become the subject of controversy among members. Nevertheless, what is the concept of law and emotion(legal emotion) and what the functions, limitations, and roles of legal appraisal in the legal system and judicial practice are have not been clearly explained. Generally speaking, the common sense, reason, and sound social notions of ordinary people in the law are only comprehensively referred to, and specifically, does it mean the simple emotional attitude of the people related to a specific issue, or does it have a deep meaning containing cultural and historical dimensions? It is unclear whether it means legal consciousness or whether it is a collection of public opinion that judicial or law enforcement agencies can refer to. In order for legal emotion to become a meaningful concept that suggests a certain solution to our society's legal issues or at least forms for public discussion on related issues, this study primarily attempted to elucidate legal emotion epistemologically. In other words, while attempting to identify the legitimacy of the law as a residual of legal experience that cannot be explained only by the rationality of the law, it is expected that the critique of the legal emotion will increase the resilience of the members of the legal community for their expectations and trust in the law.
The epistemological explanation of the legal emotion is more important not only at the theoretical level, but also in judicial practice, especially in relation to law discovery and law formation. This is because, in the case of major unconstitutional decisions of the Constitutional Court, which caused a big issue in society, the Constitutional Court judges commonly apply the interpretation of the law and the criteria for reviewing the constitutionality of the law, while at the same time taking the transformation of society and changes in the structure of the people's consciousness as the main basis for their judgment. . Among the major unconstitutional decisions of several Constitutional Courts, the issue of particular interest to this study is the Constitutional Court's decision on the right to life. Legal debates over the right to life are fundamentally linked to ethical debates and involve strong emotional reactions to different beliefs. Most of the major unconstitutional decisions are the process of accommodating changes in legal culture or legal emotion according to changes in the times or society. Among them, life (or death) is understood segmentally according to successive stages of development due to the development of advanced biotechnology and medical technology. Changes detected in the traditional view of life, reproduction, and death change the landscape of discussion of justification for the ideological right to life even in legal arguments. This study reads the formation and change of legal emotion according to the recent changes in the times, focusing on the discussion on the right to life, and discusses how these changes in legal emtion can be accommodated in legal judgment.
In summary, by carrying out research on the basic theory of the concept, function, role, and limitations of legal emotion, and using it for the analysis of the Constitutional Court’s constitutional decision centered on the right to life, the goal is to simultaneously conduct epistemological clarification and empirical review of legal emotion. This study ultimately seeks to redefine the status of legal emotion in terms of the restoration of the whole law rather than a challenge to the law.