Prof. Sungmoon Kim, professor of political theory and director of the Center for East Asian and Comparative Philosophy at City University of Hong Kong, delivered the CCTL’s Comparative Constitutional Law Research online seminar entitled Confucianism and the Presidential Impeachment in South Korea: Confucian Constitutionalism? The presentation, based on his recent article, addressed the relevance of Confucian values in the landmark decision of the South Korea’s Constitutional Court in 2017 upholding the motion to impeach the president. By associating the Court’s jurisprudence characterized by highly moralistic language and style of reasoning with Confucian constitutionalism, Professor Kim presents Confucian constitutionalism as indirect constitutionalism, a mode of constitutionalism that aims to shape the polity’s constitutional identity in a way that achieves a meaningful congruence between liberal constitutional principles and the underlying public culture that defines the polity as a distinctive moral community.

Prof BÙI Ngọc Sơn chaired the seminar and moderated a stimulating Q&A session.