Even through South Korea, Japan, China, and North Korea participate in global regionalism, they have continued to maintain oppositions, conflicts and militaristic national conceptions for over 70 years in Northeast Asia. The biggest reason for the different courses between the EU and Northeast Asia from the perspective of the constitutional law doctrine (Staatsrechtslehre) is the latter’s post-imperial leader system through the formal rule of law. Northeast Asia’s political systems are based on an incongruous combination of a base layer of social consciousness as per the Confucian public view and a surface layer of order and rules as per the organicism from Germany.

This paper asserts that firstly, similar to the path of the EU, the attempt to create these four countries’ own institutional economic integration and the approaches of economic and administrative law to make a functional integration will serve as a cornerstone for peace and economic growth in Northeast Asia. Secondly, it argues that their common phenomenon of exercising absolute state authority will be the largest obstacle to the realisation of Northeast Asia’s own institutional economic integration. Finally, in comparing the path of the partial transfer of state sovereignty into the supranational authority in the EU, the paper emphasises that to build on Northeast Asia’s highest cultural values with integration depends on the success of the transformation of state power from purely factual into legal.

This paper is drawn from Staatsrechtslehre’s theory by G. Jellinek, the system of Radbruch's legal philosophy, and the theory of general principles of European Union Law by A. von Bockdandy. It is also based on the “Handbuch der Grundrechte”, published by H. J. Papier, and the “Handbuch des Staatsrechts” by J. Isensee. Furthermore, its analysis of the concept of sovereignty is drawn from the theories of H. Quaritsch, U. Haltern, S. Krasner, and F. H. Hinsley.