The Korea Local Administration Review

The Constitution of Korea ensures local autonomy and definitizes its contentsin specific identifications. However, in fact there are many competence disputesbetween a state agency and a local government these days. To solve thesedisputes, they can choose three legal solutions. Especially, adjudication oncompetence dispute of Constitutional Court of Korea is most important in threelegal solutions. Therefore, this study examines all of cases which ConstitutionalCourt of Korea has judged since 1998 on competence dispute. More concretely,competence dispute of Constitutional Court of Korea includes three types ofcompetence dispute: between state agencies, between a state agency and alocal government, between local governments. Out of these competencedisputes, this study focus on competence dispute between state agency and alocal government. As a conclusion of study, it is revealed that ConstitutionalCourt of Korea regards the positive law as the most important standard andthere is an insufficiency for it to make local autonomy effective. And it isnecessary for Constitutional Court of Korea to interpret local autonomy lawsaffirmatively.
□ Keywords : adjudication on competence dispute, a state agency and a localgovernment, local autonomy, agency litigation