The Embodiment and Execution of Basic Law Principles in Transitional Countries
This paper examines how the principles expressed in the constitutions of transitional countries principles of democracy, the rule of law, and socialism have taken shape in different fields of law. Specifically, the experience of China, which has pursued systemic transition through changes in its economy and legalstructure, holds many implications for North Korea's reform and opening. North Korea's existing conditions for transition differ from those of other socialist countries, not only in politics and the economy but in several areas. As such, this paper aims to examine how transitioning socialist countries have drawn up basic laws for the embodiment and execution of fundamental principles contained in the constitution. This study considers what may be called the principal laws of transition: privatization law, criminal law, economic law, and the judicial system. The case of Hungary and Poland, which revised their constitutions to change the legal system of state ownership to one of privatization, is instructive. Their amended constitutions include an express provision guaranteeing the right to own private property, the very basis of a market economy. In the reform of the judicial system in European transitional countries, efforts to depoliticize the judiciary led to the introduction of various systems to insure its independence.