to be the court of last resort, has criticized the Constitutional Court for attempting to upend the "three-tiered trial" system—referring to the conventional practice of allowing appeals up to twice—and placing itself above the Supreme Court. In 2022, the relationship between the two high courts seemingly came to a head when the Constitutional Court overturned a Supreme Court decision without declaring the relevant statute unconstitutional, holding that the statute itself does not violate the Constitution but its particular application does. The Supreme Court publicly denounced the ruling, saying that it entails the unacceptable implication that the ordinary courts' decisions fall under the Constitutional Court's jurisdiction, which subjugates the Supreme Court to the Constitutional Court. The Constitutional Court of Korea is the seat of the Permanent Secretariat for Research and Development of the Association of Asian Constitutional Courts and Equivalent Institutions. History After regaining independence from the Japanese colonial rule in 1945, there were multiple attempts to establish an independent constitutional court to exercise judicial review. Members of the Constitutional Drafting Committee prior to the first republic debated whether Korea's system of constitutional review should be modeled after the United States or continental Europe. Kwon Seung-ryul's proposal followed the American judicial system where only the Supreme Court interprets the constitution, whereas Yoo Jin-oh's proposal followed the European model with a constitutional court. The Constitutional Committee () of the first republic was the result of a compromise between the two proposals. According to the 1948 Constitution, the vice president chaired the Constitutional Committee, the National Assembly appointed five assemblymen as committee members (after the 1952 constitutional amendment, three from the House of Representatives and two from the House of Councillors), and the chief justice of the Supreme Court recommended five from the Supreme Court justices to the Committee. Syngman Rhee's dictatorial rule, however, sabotaged the Committee's normal operation, and as a result, the Committee was able to adjudicate only six cases, two of which ruled the statutes at issue unconstitutional. The 1952 constitutional amendment established a bicameral legislature but Syngman Rhee's regime, until its demise, refused to enact the House of Councillors election law. As a result, the upper house, required for the Constitutional Committee to function, was never formed, and the Constitutional Committee soon ground to a halt. After Rhee was overthrown in the April Revolution, the second republic was established through a constitutional amendment transitioning from a presidential to parliamentary