For this symposium, I was invited to serve on two panels. For Panel 2, I was asked to provide commentaries on three papers, namely: (1) John O. Haley, The Japanese Judiciary: Maintaining Integrity, Autonomy, and the Public Trust; (2) David S. Law, The Anatomy of a Conservative Court: Judicial Review in Japan; and (3) John [...]
It is notorious in the area of Japanese legal studies that the Supreme Court of Japan has held legislation to be unconstitutional in only a handful of cases since the Constitution was promulgated in 1947. This feature of its jurisprudence is viewed as being rather remarkable when compared to the records of the high courts [...]
In his Article, Professor Matsui provides us with a general explanation of judicial conservatism in Japan. He points out that the Supreme Court of Japan is self-restrained because it is staffed with Justices who share a collective mentality of self-restraint. He also argues, among other things, that this kind of “judicial passivism” has its root [...]
When the Bulldog Sauce case landed at the doorstep of the Japanese Supreme Court in July 2007, one suspects that the Court greeted it with all the enthusiasm of a homeowner who opens the front door to collect the morning paper, only to find waiting a basket full of orphaned kittens.
Unusually for a Japanese [...]
We know that they are there, but, unlike law clerks at the United States Supreme Court, not much has been written about our “courtiers” to the Supreme Court of Japan: saikō saibansho chōsakan.
The question of how a judge decides a case has long captivated judges and court observers. Conceptualists of various kinds have long dominated inquiry in this question in Japan. They construct judicial process in a syllogistic deduction of conclusions by applying law as a major premise to fact as a minor premise. They are also [...]
