국민연금법의 헌법적 쟁점 -헌법재판소 결정을 중심으로

Abstract

This article aims to analyse and evaluate the decisions concerning the National Pension Service Act (NPSA) rendered by the Constitutional Court. This requires at first to understand the characteristics of the benefit as well as the normative structure of the NPSA, and restate them for the constitutional review. The NPSA should reflect its character as a means of social security and fulfil its function. The purpose of this Act is to secure income in the old age of the entire nation. To achieve this goal, the institutional stability ought to be provided objectively, and an individual's legal stability ought to be granted subjectively. This is because, based thereon, individuals can predict their legal status and changes, and autonomously (re)design their lives in the coming old age by diversifying the means for the income security. In that the national pension is concerned deeply with the lives in the old age, various issues concerning the NPSA can become constitutional problems. This article focuses to (re)align the issues of the NPSA into the constitutional structure, making the relevant constitutional problems discussable, which will contribute to accumulating the theoretical assets for the further formation of and discussion on the issues and avoiding unnecessary controversy in the sphere of the national pension service on the way to the further improvement or reform. In this process, this work will motivate to compare the national pension service with other functionally similar ones like public officials pension which helps to extract the homogeneity as well as heterogeneity and enhances the systematic conformity. The core criterion on this work will be the right to equality. The character of the survivor's benefits, the age of the children for the benefits, and the difference of the conditions by gender for the survivor's benefit are constitutionally reviewed in this article.