ed Top court in limbo

President Park must quicken process of filling vacancies

The Constitutional Court is a brainchild of the nation’s pro-democracy movement in the late 1980s. The court is credited with playing a key role in developing the nation’s democracy and improving people’s basic rights.

But the top court has fallen into a limbo because of the indifference of politicians and political infighting.

Over the last two months since Lee Kang-kook retired from his chief justice post on Jan. 21, the court has been in operation with eight justices, led by acting chief Song Doo-hwan. Song will complete his term and retire from the post Friday, which will leave two vacancies on the nine panel bench ― unprecedented in our constitutional history.

In-between, former President Lee Myung-bak nominated Lee Dong-heub to lead the Constitutional Court but he withdrew in mid-February amid allegations of various ethical lapses.

The court can still make a ruling with just seven justices. But it’s virtually impossible for the court to reach verdicts on cases that are socially or politically sensitive because six justices out of the seven must give consent in order to declare a law to be unconstitutional. The court did not make a single ruling last month, even when there were eight justices.

More pitiful still is that the Constitutional Court has decided to advance by a week its regular sentencing that normally takes place on the last Thursday of every month. Therefore, this month’s sentencing will be made today. Given the time needed to carry out parliamentary hearings and subsequent approval procedures, the seven-judge system will persist for a considerable while.

The ``vegetative’’ state of the court is an outright violation of the relevant law and amounts to disregarding the Constitution. However, to our surprise, this issue has never reportedly been discussed formally at the presidential office.

Probably that’s because the issue has not been on the priority list of President Park Geun-hye who was busy making up her Cabinet amid partisan strife over the government restructuring scheme. But she should have dealt with the issue as soon as she was sworn in as the nation’s first female leader. Her indifference to constitutional concerns is very distant from her usual emphasis on law and principles.

It’s belated but even now Park needs to quicken the process of filling the vacancies to minimize the fallout from the court’s state of limbo. It goes without saying that she must nominate qualified persons. The opposition Democratic United Party, for its part, must refrain from political offensives and render its full support in order to put the court back on track as soon as possible.

Last but not least, the rival parties need to overhaul the system of nominating Constitutional Court justices to prevent a recurrence of the judicial vacuum. For example, the tenure of an outgoing justice must be extended automatically until his or her successor is determined.