Category: Japanese Law

This is the title of our translated and edited collection of essays written in Japanese over the last two decades by a leading legal sociologist in East Asia and world-wide, Professor Takao Tanase (in press, forthcoming January 2010 from Edward Elgar). Leon Wolff and I hope to present an outline at the Inaugural East Asian Law and Society Conference to be held on 5-6 February 2010 at the University of Hong Kong, supported by a Collaborative Research Network within the (originally US-based) Law and Society Association.
Tanase’s empirically-based critique of legal legalism is important not only for the United States, which tends to represent an extreme case. It also helps in assessing developments in East Asian countries increasingly exposed or attracted to American views of how law does and should relate to society, including Japan – but also perhaps China (see eg Tanase, 27(3) Mich J Int’l Law, 2006). Tanase’s neo-communitarian critique also presents a challenge to liberalism more generally, making his reassessment particularly timely for two reasons. First, the Global Financial Crisis was prompted partly by a particular liberal vision of how markets do or should operate. Secondly, countries like Japan have now experienced a decade of reform discussions and initiatives allegedly aimed at “Americanising” the judicial system and the legal profession.

Continue reading “Law and Community: A Critical Reassessment of American Liberalism and Japanese Modernity”

At the JSAA-ICJLE conference held at UNSW over 13-16 July 2009, I presented a pathbreaking comparative introduction into how the Japanese government delivers legal services, especially the central government in its high volume of litigated cases. (I also contributed to a panel discussion on “”Bridging the Gap between Japanese Language and Japanese Legal Studies” – click here for abstracts and Powerpoints.)

This presentation was based on a draft paper co-authored with Ritsumeikan University Associate Professor Stephen Green, a former lawyer for the Australian government and joint ANJeL-in-Japan Program Convenor, and Meiji University political scientist Professor Shinichi Nishikawa. We are bringing together a detailed manuscript for a law journal, as well as a shorter version for the next proposed book by Wolff, Nottage & Anderson (eds) Who Judges Japanese Law? Popular Participation in Japan’s Legal Process. Our analysis begins to fill a significant gap in the literature comparing Japan’s legal profession. This lacuna is all the more surprising, given Japan’s efforts at comprehensive reform of its judicial system underway since 2001.

Continue reading “Who Defends Japan? Government Lawyers and Judicial System Reform in Japan and Australia”

Responding partly to the May judgment of the German Constitutional Court upholding a ban on hyphenated triple-barrelled surnames, Lisa Pryor suggests we adopt ‘the Spanish solution’ (‘Repetitive name injury‘, Sydney Morning Herald, 6-7 June, News Review p7). That is, children get two surnames, one from each parent. She also suggests we ditch middle names. But middle names already can be used to good effect to address her concerns, especially in the Australia-Japan context.
On the other hand, there remains a problem with Japan’s Nationality Law, despite its recent amendments, that might catch out children of Australian and Japanese parents.

Continue reading “Possibilities and Pitfalls in Laws Affecting Children of Australian and Japanese Parents”

[English version for: Baum, Nottage et al’s Bibliography chapter in Harald Baum (ed) Handbuch des japanischen Handels- und Wirtschaftsrechts [Handbook of Japanese Commercial and Economic Law] (Carl Heymann, Cologne, forthcoming 2009)]
When Harald Baum and I translated and expanded the original Bibliography chapter in the first edition of this book, and published it as Japanese Business Law in Western Languages: An Annotated Selective Bibliography (Fred B Rothman, 1998), we added a new section introducing the online resources that were already increasingly available for free over the Internet. We also created a webpage – Japanese Law Links, now archived at Sydney Law School – that updated and expanded our introductions to resources made public by various types of organisations.
After another decade, following further exponential growth in the Internet as well as steady increases in interest and writing about Japanese law world-wide, it is now both easier and harder to offer a guide to such online resources. It is harder to be as comprehensive in reviewing them, because of their sheer volume, and there is the added difficulty of selecting the more authoritative and useful resources. However, our task is also easier in that there are now several well-established and reputable websites. They often contain (sometimes annotated) links to other resources, and often original material, in Western languages – especially in English, which is therefore our main focus in this chapter. It is also easier because of higher-quality Internet search engines, such as Google, although no search engine can ever be perfect – as we show next.

Continue reading “Japanese Law in English through the Internet: Take Two”