Japanese and Asia-Pacific Dispute Resolution events over October 2021

Over this month I am pleased to contribute to three events regarding Asia-Pacific arbitration and dispute resolution. On 1 October, I am moderating a session on International Commercial Arbitration in Japan and Germany, at the comparative ADR conference hosted by Institute of Japanese Law at the FernUniversität in Hagen to commemorate the 30th anniversary of its online courses in Japanese law. The speakers are well-known lawyers Ms Yoshimi Ohara (Nagashima Ohno & Tsumematsu) and Dr Christian Strasser (HEUKING KÜHN LÜER WOJTEK). Other sessions compare investment treaty arbitration as well as mediation.

On 20 October I present two classes in a new postgraduate law course on international commercial arbitration developed for the University of Chile by Santiago-based lawyer and former USydney LLM student Ricardo Vasquez Urra, which we hope will be offered annually. This too draws on my recently published book on international commercial and investor-state arbitration, and parallels my co-teaching (with barrister Dr Anna Kirk) the LLM course on international commercial arbitration at the University of Auckland late last year and in 2022.

On 2 October, I present the module on consumer redress and access to justice for a new postgraduate intensive course on consumer protection developed by the University of Malaya. I highlight law and policy developments mostly by comparing Australia, Japan and Southeast Asia, building on books including ASEAN Consumer Law Cooperation and Harmonisation (CUP 2019) and Contract Law in Japan (Wolters Kluwer 2019, 2nd ed 2022), as well as other recent publications including Studies in the Contract Laws of Asia (especially Volume III, all reviewed here for the Journal of Japanese Law). We explore some law and practice around courts and tribunals, Ombudsman and related arbitration-like processes, mediation, and other processes for consumer redress.

P.S. On 26 October I also present on “Corporate Governance and Independent Directors in Southeast Asia” (focusing on Thailand and somewhat Malaysia) for a webinar on the Role of Independent Directors in Contemporary Asia, part of the Contemporary Asia International Forum Series 2021 at National (National Chung Hsing University) hosted by Professor I-Tzu (Edith) Su.

P.P.S. This marks the 250th posting on this Japanese Law and the Asia-Pacific blog, over more than a decade. Many thanks to occasional guest bloggers and all readers!

Studies in the Contract Laws of Asia (Volumes I-III of VI)

My review essay [longer manuscript here on SSRN, shorter version forthcoming in Journal of Japanese Law (end-2021)] assesses the detailed, authoritative and thought-provoking first three of six proposed volumes in the series on “Studies in the Contract Laws of Asia” published by Oxford University Press. Lead-edited by Mindy Chen-Wishart, these excellent volumes span remedies for breach (2016), formation of contract and third-party beneficiaries (2018), and contents of contracts and unfair terms (2020, thus extending to an important area of consumer law). The respective editors argue quite compellingly for significant functional convergence even among Asian legal systems from quite divergent legal traditions. However, such convergence arguably becomes less obvious especially by the third volume. The functional analysis also focuses primarily on what decisions would be rendered by courts in stylised fact scenarios rather than whether and how such outcomes are reflected in contracting practices or law reform processes. Closer examination of these aspects may make future volumes even more valuable for researchers, practitioners and policy-makers.

Guest Blog: Pandemic Pressure Points –Economics Governance and Society in Japan

Written by: Joseph Black (CAPLUS law student Intern, 2021) [with updates from Prof Luke Nottage]

On 25 August 2021, the Australian Network for Japanese Law (ANJeL), the Australia-Japan Society of New South Wales (AJS), the Australia-Japan Research Centre (AJRC), the Japan Studies Association of Australia (JSAA) and the Centre for Asian and Pacific Law (CAPLUS) delivered a timely seminar entitled “Pandemic Pressure Points: Economics, Governance and Society in Japan”. The webinar [recorded here] was moderated by Dr Rowena Ward, JSAA Treasurer and Senior Lecturer in Japanese studies at the University of Wollongong. Panellists were Professor Yasuko Hassall Kobayashi, Associate Professor at Ritsumeikan University’s College of Global Liberal Arts (and Honorary Associate Professor, ANU College of Asia and the Pacific); ANJeL co-director Professor Luke Nottage from the University of Sydney Law School; and Professor Shiro Armstrong, AJRC director and Associate Professor of economics at the Australian National University (also co-editor of the East Asia Forum blog). Closing remarks were given by Masahiko Kiya, Consul-General of Japan in Sydney, and also Patron of AJS and on ANJeL’s Advisory Board. We had the privilege to explore diverse and topical themes: the impact of the pandemic on Japanese governance and its legal system, the impact of the pandemic on the Japanese economy, how the pandemic has disadvantaged vulnerable groups, and, among other themes, the emergence and potential of digitalisation in Japan. [Comparing developments in Japan with China, Indonesia and Malaysia, as part of an ANJeL/CAPLUS/CAPI (UVic) webinar around Prof Victor Ramraj’s edited book on COVID-19 in Asia, see the 28 May 2021 webinar recording here.]

Dr Ward commenced the substantive part of the seminar by sharing graphs reflecting vaccination and case numbers in Japan. While the number of cases has substantially increased since the middle of June 2021, deaths have recently come down compared to the 7-day average (~7 compared to 32), and have been kept very low by international standards even during earlier waves. Turning to age and sex statistics, males, especially in their 80s, are generally at a higher risk of death than females, and recently, there have been virtually no women in their 30s who have died from COVID. Around 40% of Japanese have received two doses. This number is somewhat higher than in Australia, which has also ramped up vaccinations over the last two months.

Following the statistics, Professor Kobayashi presented and dissected the economic disparity between women and men in the Japanese labour market amid the pandemic and the general social picture. Professor Kobayashi noted that women have generally had less income than men (~251.0 to 338.0); have been subject to precarious, part-time jobs at a higher rate than men; and have experienced more unemployment than men. Women with child/ren had the highest unemployment rate (11.5% compared to 4.2% for men and 9.1% for women) according to May 2020 statistics. As Professor Armstrong later suggested, the actual rate of unemployment figure may be unknown for all women (and men), as the unemployed may not have started looking for employment and are therefore not incorporated in unemployment statistics. Professor Kobayashi noted that there has been an increasing number of telephone consultations for domestic violence (skyrocketing from around 9,000 in January 2020 to over 17,000 between March and April 2020). Furthermore, women have found themselves tasked with ever-more domestic responsibilities, and would like men to participate more in the household than pre-pandemic (21% of tasks to about a quarter).

Professor Armstrong turned to the Japanese economy, and discussed the immediate impacts of the pandemic on the economy. He noted that, while the economy did not shrink this quarter, we may miss the ‘Olympic bounce’ that historically accompanies the Olympics (Tokyo was in a state of emergency and we did not see the type of tourism that follows the Olympics). Nonregular workers, women, young people, the elderly, and the vulnerable in Japanese society have particularly experienced financial hardship. Unlike Australia, Japan has provided limited stimuli, and it has taken considerable time for Japanese to receive checks and masks.

Later, Professor Nottage discussed Japanese law before and amid the pandemic. Japan has been comparatively unusual in pandemic management [but rather like eg Sweden] by not imposing criminal or other legal sanctions on individuals, but instead relying mainly on community norms and self-responsibility to limit movement and COVID-19 spread. One question is whether this provides another example of what Professor John Haley identified as a persistent pattern of “authority without power” in Japanese legal history, meaning authorities don’t have or want to invoke legal powers. An illustration is the practice of informal “administrative guidance” to influence business activity, quite common until the 1980s.

However, Professor Nottage observed that with the COVID-19 pandemic, the government did have constitutional power to extend emergency powers to restrict business activity (which it eventually legislated for, but still in a soft manner compared to Australia and other countries) and even to restrict movement by citizens. The government seems to have decided not to introduce harder lockdown measures because legally they still have to be proportionate, and Japanese citizens and firms generally act responsibly anyway. Another reason is that compensation should be paid if constraints are legislated, and the Japanese government already has high levels of national debt. The response has arguably struck quite a good balance, if we focus on the very low death rates (as the government seems to have done from the outset of the pandemic) combined with benefits from keeping the economy largely open. As one Tokyo-based law professor remarked, a visitor nowadays wouldn’t really know that Japan was going through a global pandemic, except for people wearing masks in crowded situations, somewhat fewer commuters as more work or have university studies from home, and some organisations restricting numbers and hours of operation.

The recent reliance mainly on self- and community responsibility does sit somewhat uneasily with the reforms implemented after an all-of-government report on justice system reform, aimed at making the law more part of everyday life in Japan. Those changes to civil and criminal justice, as well as the expansion of legal education and professionals, were aimed at allowing businesses more flexibility instead of ex ante regulation by public authorities, but improved processes to provide ex post remedies for misbehaviour through more functional courts or alternative dispute resolution systems. But in public health, especially in crises like a pandemic, prevention is usually better than cure. There are downsides, too, in moving socio-economic ordering in an overly legalistic direction.

Professor Nottage also mentioned some areas where the pandemic has had significant impact on Japan’s legal system, drawing on a series of YouTube interviews with various experts in Japanese law, funded through the Japan Foundation Sydney for ANJeL and the JSAA. Japan’s contract and consumer law systems seems to be responding comparatively well, but the pandemic challenges have forced the courts to bring forward plans to digitalise their still mostly paper-based procedures. By contrast, the rapid worldwide shift to remote hearings in international arbitration and mediation creates opportunities for newly established ADR institutions in Japan, but also significant competition.

The webinar also had a variety of questions and answers during the question segment, in the Sydney Law School podcasts recording. For further developments and perspectives, the AJRC is holding a Japan Update 2021 online seminar on 8 September 2021 over 10:00AM-3:00PM AEST.

***

Joseph Black is a Juris Doctor student at the University of Sydney and anticipates commencing his Masters of International Law program from February 2022. Joseph is an intern with the CAPLUS and is interested in Japanese Law, Chinese Law, Indonesian Law, East Asian Studies, and other fields.

Asia ADR Week 2021 session on roles of in-house counsel [& ‘errors of law in arbitration’]

[Updates: A. Also in August 2021, I chaired a presentation via Monash University on “Errors of Law in Arbitration – Revisited”, with a recording here. Dr Benjamin Hayward argued that a tribunal’s application of a substantive law different from that expressly chosen by the parties, or not applying the conflict of law provisions of the seat (and any chosen Rules) where such substantive law is not expressly chosen, could constitute an error of applicable procedure and thus a ground for challenging the consequent arbitral award.

B. My co-authored article on the new ACICA Rules (mentioned at 7 below), including comparative references to Japan and other Asian jurisdictions, is available in manuscript form: Nottage, Luke R. and Dreosti, Julia and Tang, Robert, The ACICA Arbitration Rules 2021: Advancing Australia’s Pro-Arbitration Culture (September 26, 2021). Journal of International Arbitration, 38:6, 2021 (Forthcoming), Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3931086

C. My co-authored article empirically examining the “formalisation” of international arbitration, and the diminishing influence of non-lawyers (or even in-house counsel) across key nodes of influence, is available in manuscript here (and shortened for a forthcoming Elgar book co-edited by Shahla Ali, Giorgio Colombo et al on “Sustainable Diversity in International Arbitration”): Nottage, Luke R. and Teramura, Nobumichi and Tanna, James, Lawyers and Non-Lawyers in International Arbitration: Discovering Diminishing Diversity (September 20, 2021). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3926914]

As part of the “Asia ADR Week” of events for 2021, coordinated by the Asian International Arbitration Centre based in Kuala Lumpur, as session was scheduled for the first day of the main conference – Thursday 19 August 4-5pm AEST (2-3pm KL time) – on the topic of “Starting In-House: The Role of General Counsel of Multinational Corporations in ADR”. [A recording is available on request for my USydney students.] Agreed session contributors were myself as moderator and:

  1. Ms Debolina Partap (Wockhardt Limited, general counsel based in Mumbai)
  1. Ms Esther Chow (Kone Elavator (M) Sdn Bhd, general counsel based in KL)
  1. Mr Nick Longley (Holman Fenwick Willan, based in Melbourne; formerly in a law office in Hong Kong as well as in-house for four years with a Japanese civil engineering company and now significant engagement with Korean firms)
  1. Mr Cameron Ford (Squire Patton Boggs, based in Singapore, and formerly in-house for over a decade)
  2. Mr Raymond Goh (China Tourism Group Corp Ltd, Group general counsel – International, in Hong Kong / China).

The assigned description was: “The role of an in-house counsel in shifting the focal point on dispute resolution from the traditional standpoint of litigation to the innovative vigor of ADR has resulted in the majority of Fortune 1000 companies preferring to use ADR as a means of resolving both international and domestic disputes. This session focuses on the multi-faceted role of in-house counsel in spearheading ADR as a principal means of resolving disputes.” The focus therefore was on evolving in-house counsel perceptions around Asia regarding alternatives to litigation (arbitration, mediation, other Alternative Dispute Resolution) to resolve cross-border disputes. Part of the backdrop is resurgent delays and especially costs in international commercial arbitration despite its continued spread east from the traditional (European then US) venues.

The first part of the session asked some general questions focused on our panelists currently or having worked extensively as in-house counsel [Ms Chow, Ms Partap, Mr Goh, Mr Ford]:

1. How do or should in-house counsel teams nowadays decide generally whether to provide for and/or engage in arbitration, mediation, expert determination or other ADR rather than cross-border litigation?

2. Does or should the approach change if the disputes involve commercial and government parties?

The second part of the session posed some more specific questions:

3. The latest QMUL international arbitration survey (with more than usual Asia-Pacific respondents) confirms the continued popularity of multi-tiered DR clauses, which commit parties contractually to try eg mediation before arbitration (rather than having waiting for the dispute to arise, and then try to achieve agreement to try other ADR before proceeding to pre-agreed arbitration). Yet are such multi-tiered clauses equally negotiated and invoked among companies and legal advisors in the Asian region? See http://www.arbitration.qmul.ac.uk/research/2021-international-arbitration-survey/ [cf eg Japan, Korea (Mr Longley), Malaysia (Ms Chow)]

4. Especially in the region, are there difficulties in enforcing say the mediation step (as a jurisdictional requirement say before being able to proceed to arbitration), and issues in determining the law applicable to that question? Cf eg this US report / chapter for a book / project by Profs Gu and Reyes: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3601337, and recent case law in Hong Kong etc (https://pulse.kwm.com/hong-kong/multi-tiered-dispute-resolution-clauses-what-happens-if-you-dont-comply/) [Mr Longley]

5. What prospects are there for more establishment and use of dedicated centres for mediation, especially in the Asian region (eg already Singapore / SIMC, but also recently Japan / JIMC and Vietnam / VMC)? See eg https://www.jimc-kyoto.jp/. Would it be easier for in-house counsel to promote cross-border mediation if institutional, rather than ad hoc?

6. Why is the 2019 Singapore Mediation Convention, aimed at facilitating enforcement of settlement agreements along the lines of the NYC, attracting many signatures (but not eg from Japan or Australia) but few ratifications? See https://uncitral.un.org/en/texts/mediation/conventions/international_settlement_agreements/status. What have been experiences in enforcing settlement agreements cross-border in Asia even without this new Convention?

7. Is there declining interest and practice of Arb-Med across Asia (except perhaps in mainland China and to a lesser extent Japan), linked perhaps to more use of separate mediation as part of multi-tiered DR clauses, and/or a sense that Arb-Med is not “global practice” which arbitration institutions and practitioners feel increasingly required to follow? Cf ACICA (for which Mr Longley and I served on the Rules drafting committee) which decided not to proceed with an Arb-Med provision in its 2021 Rules, although modelled on legislative provisions for domestic arbitrations: http://arbitrationblog.kluwerarbitration.com/2021/05/01/is-arb-med-un-australian/ [Mr. Goh]

8. Are there already or likely to be changes towards more use of mediation (either separate, or in Arb-Med) due to the pandemic, or eg has the enforced move to remote hearings etc created enough time, cost and arbitrator availability benefits to maintain adequate attractiveness for international arbitration? Is the recent rise of Expert Determination in Australian domestic dispute resolution driven by arbitration costs and delays in arbitration and litigation, thus likely to carry over into cross-border dispute resolution and beyond the pandemic? [Mr Longley, compared with say Malaysia – Ms Chow, and experiences from Singapore – Mr Ford]

Australasian Consumer Law Roundtable: 1 December @ USydney

Sydney Law School, with support especially from its Ross Parsons Centre, is pleased to host this year’s Roundtable, in hybrid format on 1 December 2021, to discuss recent or emerging research and topics in consumer law and policy. In an informal interactive format, for the last fifteen years the Roundtables invite together experts in consumer law mainly from universities across Australia and New Zealand, but sometimes more widely including from Japan and other parts of Asia or even further afield, as well as some consumer regulators or peak NGO representatives. The event is open to other staff and HDR students from USydney, as the host, and any consumer law academics from Australian, NZ or Asian universities are also welcome to seek permission to attend by emailing luke.nottage@sydney.edu.au

Short presentations for discussion at this year’s Roundtable include the following [not necessarily in the order listed below]. Several involved recent or forthcoming publications that may be made available to the wider public already or after the event.

Samuel Becher (VUW)“Dark Contracts” (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3911528)Firms design non-transparent consumer contracts. This article documents the multiple non-transparent contractual mechanisms and practices that firms employ in their consumer contracts. Specifically, it delineates how firms use non-transparent tools in almost every possible contractual juncture: from the contract’s nature, scope, and language to contract performance, dispute resolution, change, and termination. The article first documents this non-transparency. Thereafter, it argues that the sum of these non-transparent components is greater than its parts. The aggregated impact of these non-transparency practices undermines fundamental contract law notions and leaves consumers disinformed and disempowered. While firms have a profit incentive to employ non-transparent contracts, bounded ethicality makes it even more unlikely that firms fully realize the harmful consequences of their contracts. Against this backdrop, the article dubs these highly non-transparent consumer contracts “Dark Contracts.” To better tackle the problem of Dark Contracts, the article proposes introducing transparency-related instruments to the law of consumer contracts to tackle this thorny challenge. It further argues that policymakers should design such concepts to (1) allow better scrutiny over firms’ practices and (2) empower consumers to make better-informed decisions.
Jason Harris (Sydney Law School)“Liability for ACL Breaches Within Corporate Groups and Franchise Systems”An emerging issue in corporate law concerns contribution orders for underpaid workers whereby the court can deem several entities to be within a ‘contribution order group’ and make another company liable for the unpaid entitlements where they have received the benefit of the work. There are broader contribution order regimes (not just for employee entitlements) in NZ, Ireland and Germany. I wonder whether ACL compensation orders had given rise to problems with corporate groups (i.e. assetless shell companies misleading, while the parent company benefits) and whether accessorial liability under ACL s236 is sufficient to address this? In other words, could contribution orders within corporate groups (loosely defined to include franchise systems) benefit consumers and are they worth looking at? I’ve done a bit of work within corporate law looking at veil piercing doctrines, and there is at least 1 TPA case on making a parent co liable for misleading conduct that was argued on veil piercing grounds (which I argued should have been decided on accessorial liability under the TPA instead). 
Jeanne Huang (Sydney Law School)“The Latest Generation of SEZs: Consumer-Oriented Unilateralism in China’s E-commerce Trade” (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3875223)WTO multilateralism is driven by manufacturers. However, in China, Cross-border E-commerce Retail Import (‘CERI’) has spurred a new, consumer-oriented trade unilateralism. CERI prospers within China’s National Cross-Border E-commerce Pilot Cities, which are Special Economic Zones aimed at using unilateral trade liberalization to meet consumers’ growing demands for high-quality foreign products. CERI enhances consumer benefits beyond reducing customer formalities and tax rates and lowering product prices. It re-conceptualizes consumer protection by treating consumers as diverse individuals rather than as a homothetic group. It also empowers consumers by making them ‘importers’ to minimize behind-the-border trade barriers. CERI warrants a rethinking of WTO multilateralism from its initial focus on corporations and capital owners to a revised focus on consumers.
Mary Keyes and Therese Wilson (Griffith U)“Protecting Consumers in International Disputes: Arbitration and Jurisdiction Agreements in Australian Law”The globalisation of markets for consumer goods and services means consumers regularly purchase goods and services from international suppliers.  These agreements typically stipulate that consumers must litigate or arbitrate, if a dispute arises, in the suppliers’ home jurisdiction.  As in other common law jurisdictions, in Australia there are no rules that deal specifically with the effect of arbitration and jurisdiction clauses in consumer contracts; their effect falls to be determined under the general principles that have been developed in the context of commercial transactions.  This article investigates the use of arbitration and jurisdiction agreements involving Australian consumers through an empirical study and evaluates the Australian laws which regulate these agreements.  It demonstrates that, while aspects of the current legal regime may have the capacity to protect consumers, such protections will not necessarily be applied. We review a number of recent cases that demonstrate this problem and suggest that changes to the Australian law are required to more explicitly protect consumers.  
Benjamin Hayward (Monash Business School)“‘Free Your Mind’: Using ‘The Matrix’ to Explain the Interaction Between the Australian Consumer Law and the CISG” For those of a certain age, the conflict between the characters Neo and Agent Smith depicted in ‘The Matrix’ trilogy of movies is well-known and is one of the great rivalries of cinema history.  What is not well-understood in the Australian legal context, including amongst lawyers who would be familiar with this Neo/Smith conflict, is the way in which the Australian Consumer Law interacts with the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (the ‘CISG’). Though the CISG excludes consumer transactions from its scope, the fact that it defines those excluded transactions differently to the way in which the Australian Consumer Law defines consumer supplies provides scope for the CISG to displace the otherwise-mandatory ACL consumer guarantees.  Analogy with ‘The Matrix’ trilogy provides an excellent basis for explaining this interaction, and ensuring that its implications are understood by the legal profession. Young lawyers and law students are today provided more means than ever to acquaint themselves with the CISG, and to understand its place in Australian law.  Anecdotal evidence suggests that a knowledge gap still exists, however, amongst older lawyers – including those who may have grown up watching Neo and Smith’s conflict play out on the silver screen.  This presentation is directed at helping address this knowledge gap, and in turns, seeks to contribute to a better professional understanding of the interaction under analysis.
Victoria Stace (VUW)“Bills, bills, bills. What recent research has revealed about debt collection practices in New Zealand and how the law might respond” (Powerpoints here)Recent research conducted by Victoria University of Wellington has given insight into the experiences of debtors who find themselves facing debt collection. Financial mentors across the country, who see clients daily in unmanageable debt situations,  were asked questions around the conduct of debt collectors, the addition of fees and interest, and use of attachment orders. Particular issue emerged such as the use of intimidation, and use of attachment orders to benefits to collect old debts. This paper discusses the findings of that research and considers how the law can assist to improve standards of behaviour.
Vivien Chen (Monash Business School) with
Lucinda O’Brien, Ian Ramsay and Paul Ali		“An Impending “Avalanche”: Debt Collection and Consumer Harm After COVID-19” (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3917247)Debt collection activity is expected to rise significantly in 2021, as financial hardship becomes more prevalent due to the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Consumer advocates have warned of an impending “avalanche in debt collection” and have called for better enforcement of laws designed to protect consumers from harassment as well as unfair, misleading and deceptive conduct by debt collectors. Women’s groups have also pointed to a rise in economic abuse, and resulting indebtedness, in the context of a general escalation in family violence during the pandemic. This article examines the legal framework governing the Australian debt collection industry. Drawing on recent case law and a series of focus groups conducted by the authors, it outlines law reform and enforcement measures that would better protect consumers from harmful debt collection practices. These include specific measures to address the financial, social and psychological impacts of family violence and economic abuse
Sagi Peari (UWA)“Consumer Protection Law, Judge Made Law and the Concept of Coherence: Can They Co-Exist?”Consumer protection law intervenes into the traditional doctrines, principles and concepts of the backbone categories of private law: contract and tort. For instance, consumer law challenges the longstanding limited scope of “unconscionability” and the “implied terms” doctrines of contract law. Within the tort law category, consumer law reconceptualises the fundamental elements of the law of negligence. While significant parts of private law categories remain to be subject to the domain of the judge-made law, the consumer laws operate through legislation. The paper tackles the following two interrelated aspects of the interplay between consumer law legislation and the traditional private law categories: (1) the impact of consumer law legislation on the judge made law; (2) the relation of this legislation to a key philosophical concept of private law- “coherence”.
Catherine Niven (QUT)“Proposals to Modernise the EU’s General Product Safety Directive: A Blueprint for Australian Reform” [pre-recording of presentation here]There has been little progress on Australian product safety reforms since the 2019 public consultation on the regulatory impact assessment of introducing a General Safety Provision (GSP). Since this time, the global COVID pandemic has accelerated growth in online shopping, exacerbating the key weakness of the Australian regime: its lack of a GSP. The European Commission (EC) has identified that the growth of e-commerce has decreased the effectiveness of its General Product Safety Directive due to its lack of specificity to online selling and applicability to new e-commerce actors in the product supply chain. In June 2021, the EC commenced public consultation on significant reform proposals aimed at modernising its framework. These include dedicated reforms for online marketplaces with obligations focussed on their place in the product supply chain, specific provisions related to online sales, widening the mandatory incident reporting obligation and using new technologies to conduct product safety recalls. There appears to be significant momentum behind these reforms to be delivered under the New Consumer Agenda of 2020. Could the developments in Europe be an opportunity for Australia to build on the last decade of reform discussion by incorporating key European reform proposals to its product safety regime to elevate the level of consumer protection and create a fairer playing field for Australian businesses?    
Geraint Howells (Galway) [Keynote]“Consumer Product Safety and Online Platform Liability” (Powerpoints here)Platforms play an increasingly important role in e-commerce. This paper highlights different approaches to making them responsible and potentially liable for dangerous goods. Voluntary, regulatory and civil liability are all potential options being explored in Australia, the EU and US. This paper hopes to prompt discussion about the appropriate way forward.
Jeannie Paterson and Yvette Maker (UMelbourne)
“The Role of Consumer Protection Law in Responding to the Risks of ‘Intelligent’ Consumer Products”Intelligent consumer products like voice-activated digital assistants potentially offer tremendous benefits to many consumers. They are labour-saving devices that create opportunities to free consumers from mundane tasks and assist them to make more informed and rational decisions. They have also been promoted for their potential to facilitate the activities of daily living for older people and people with disability. Yet while intelligent consumer products may offer convenience and enhanced accessibility, they also carry risks of harm to consumers in relation to violation of privacy, bias and discrimination and interference with decision-making autonomy. This presentation will explore the role of consumer protection law in responding to these risks, with a particular focus on issues of accessibility and equity. It will also consider the role of codes of AI ethics, and the complementary contribution of other fields of law and policy, in addressing matters on which consumer protection law has less to say.
Nicola Howell (QUT) and Jeannie Paterson (Melbourne)“Remedies for emotional harm in Australian consumer credit law”Emotional harm is a highly foreseeable outcome of financial stress – whether this arises from borrowing more than is manageable (unsuitable credit), difficulties in repaying credit arising from unforeseen life contingencies (hardship) or not being able to access credit (financial exclusion). Together with co-regulation (AFCA) and self-regulation (eg, Banking Code of Practice), the National Consumer Credit Protection Act now provides an extensive regulatory framework that should help to prevent or reduce financial stress for Australian credit consumers, however, the extent to which this framework can facilitate remedies for emotional harm (and not just financial harm) has not yet been subject to academic consideration. In this paper, we seek to address this gap by examining the current and potential scope for remedies for emotional harm arising from credit law contraventions. We begin by considering the emotional harms which may arise from over indebtedness. We then identify the key statutory provisions specifically aimed at alleviating the effects of unsuitable credit and financial hardship, and the associated remedies for breach. We argue that given the purpose of these regimes it should be open to courts to award remedies aimed at responding to emotional harm. We consider the role of regulators and AFCA in remedial relief responding to emotional harm. We scrutinise the value to consumers of such responses before turning the final part to consider remedies for failure by lenders to engage with the hardship regime and the gaps in this regime in providing real obligations and remedies/redress for breach.
Zofia Bednarz (UNSW)“Using Consumers’ Data to Determine the Target Market for Financial Products: The Difficult Marriage between Financial Law and Data Protection”Digitalisation has had a profound impact on financial services, with increasingly precise data profiling of consumers being one of the drivers of profit for the industry in the digital age. However, data profiling may also result in consumer harm that could range from data breaches to unfair pricing, digital manipulation, discrimination, and exclusion of vulnerable consumers. This can be particularly problematic in financial services context due to the consequences it has on consumers’ access to financial products. In this paper I focus on the requirement to determine the target market for financial products and its interplay with privacy and data protection rules. I argue that financial product governance rules requiring target market determination for products will further incentivise data profiling of consumers by financial services providers. I analyse ways in which financial firms may collect and use consumers’ data for the purpose of constructing the target market and confirming that clients who receive offers of products are within this target market. There is a real risk that financial law and data protection frameworks have failed to strike a balance between (surprisingly) competing interests of consumer protection regarding the provision of appropriate financial products and the use of consumers’ data in digital profiling. This means that the new rules on financial products governance may backfire, resulting in unintended consumer harms.
Kate Tokeley (VUW)“The Power of the ‘Internet of Things’ to Mislead and Manipulate Consumers: A Regulatory Challenge”
(https://ndlsjet.com/the-power-of-the-internet-of-things-to-mislead-and-manipulate-consumers-a-regulatory-challenge/)		The “Internet of Things” revolution is on its way, and with it comes an unprecedented risk of unregulated misleading marketing, and a dramatic increase in the power of personalized manipulative marketing. IoT is a term that refers to a growing network of internet-connected physical “smart” objects accumulating in our homes and cities. These include “smart” versions of traditional objects such as refrigerators, thermostats, watches, toys, light bulbs, cars, and Alexa-style digital assistants. The corporations who develop IoT are able to utilize a far greater depth of data than is possible from merely tracking our web browsing in regular online environments. They will be able to constantly collect and share real-time data from inbuilt IoT sensors and trackers such as microphones, cameras, GPS sensors, and temperature sensors. Artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to analyze this raw data in order to gain insights into consumer preferences and behavior, and deliver individualized marketing messages via our IoT devices. The persuasiveness of these marketing messages is likely to be further enhanced if future IoT household assistants are developed to have human-like mannerisms and appearances. This article explains how current laws that prohibit businesses from misleading and deceiving consumers will struggle to operate effectively in an IoT marketing landscape, where questions of who can be held liable, who should be held liable, what communication should be prohibited, and how to ensure enforcement, all become more complicated. It argues that current legal frameworks will need to be re-formulated in order to maintain the ability to prevent deceptive and misleading communication. It also tackles the wider question of whether legal frameworks should be re-formulated so as to add in protections against excessively manipulative marketing. The article points to several potential ways to achieve such re-formulations. Redesigning legal regimes to effectively protect consumers in a new IoT marketing landscape will no doubt be a challenge. The starting point is to confront the fact that there are genuinely difficult problems for which existing regulatory toolkits are ill-equipped to handle.
Kayleen Manwaring (UNSW)“Enforcement-in-a-box: Computational Implementation of Private Rights”The rise in use of smart devices and cyber-physical systems has also seen a rise in attempts at technological implementation of methods of enforcement of private rights (such as contract or copyright) by suppliers of services and software supporting those devices and systems. Many of these devices and systems are hybrids of physical object, software, hardware, data and services, and often are capable of being remotely disabled or modified by the software or service provider. This capacity for remote disablement or modification has the potential to be a potent tool for service and software suppliers to regulate an individual’s use of smart devices and cyber-physical systems. These methods may be used to enforce penalties against alleged breaches of private rights without recourse to a judicial or other dispute resolution process.  This presentation will report on a work-in-progress project intended to examine these issues. Brownsword has warned that ‘full-scale technological management’ by regulators of prohibited conduct (eg a regulator technologically limiting the speed of a car or disabling it) is the ‘thick end of the wedge’ in relation to ‘destabilising’ the rule of law and degrading the importance of human ‘agency and autonomy’.  Pasquale has additionally cautioned that even in circumstances where automated enforcement is efficient, ‘critically important publicly legal values risk being lost or marginalised when dispute settlement is automated.’  This project will examine if this conceptual analysis can be extended to business entities utilising technological management to directly enforce private rights, discussing research questions along the following lines: (1) What harms to individuals, and consequently what detrimental effects on public legal values (such as protection of consumers from abuse of corporate power), might arise from technological implementation in smart devices of private law enforcement methods, such as enforcement of debts, contractual conditions or intellectual property rights? (2) To what extent do existing laws in Australia regulate these harms and detrimental effects? (3) Do legal problems arise in relation to these existing laws? That is, are any of these laws under- or over-inclusive or uncertain? Are there any new harms or detrimental effects arising that are completely unregulated by existing law? (4) How can these harms and detrimental effects be mitigated from a legal (and potentially technological) point of view? 
May Fong Cheong (ACU)“Remedies for Purchasers of Forged Art: The Potential in Section 18 ACL on Misleading Conduct”Art is acquired for its aesthetic value, for the beauty of that art piece as communicated by the artist. However, art is also increasingly acquired for the authorship of the art – buyers desiring not only art, but the work of a recognised “artist”. The authorship value of well-known artists has seen art pieces fetching skyrocketing prices transforming art as objects of aesthetic expression to art as an investment tool. The ‘commodification’ and ‘financialisation’ of art provide opportunities and economic incentives to produce counterfeits and forgeries posing unseen risk to purchasers of art. Both the art enthusiast and the art investor who pays a price for a work of art are entitled to enjoy, and obtain, that which they were led to believe – that the work is authored by the artist who painted that landscape, that object on the framed canvas piece he or she had paid for. They are entitled to the goods as described, to the attribution given of the art piece and to statements warranting the authorship and authenticity of the art. However, art authentication is a complex process: at the intrinsic level to search the truth to determine its cultural and historic value and at a practical level to protect the economic value of art and the functioning of the art market. The purchaser’s challenge to acquire authentic art pieces is further compounded by the intricacies and anomalies in the art industry; one concerning aspect is the questionable practices of auction houses. As a result, art purchasers find themselves in the precarious position of not knowing if the art pieces hanging in their walls are forged. This paper first considers two legal avenues that a disgruntled art purchaser might pursue: (i) implied conditions of goods corresponding to description in the Sale of Goods legislation; and (ii) consumer guarantees of acceptable quality, and of goods as described, under the Consumer Guarantee Law. It then considers how certificates of authenticity of authorship have been decided under the Uniform Commercial Code and under the New York Arts and Cultural Affairs Law. Finally, the paper investigates recourse to art buyers under the misleading conduct provision in section 18 of the Australian Consumer Law and argues that despite some limitations, this avenue offers the best potential for success for purchasers of forged art. 
Luke Nottage (USydney), Jeannie Paterson (UMelbourne) & Erin Turner (Choice)“Post-Pandemic Rights to Repair and Other Remedies Under the Australian Consumer Law” (PDF of Powerpoints here)
Recent survey evidence from Australia’s peak consumer NGO, for a current inquiry by the Productivity Commission into rights to repair, confirms anecdotal accounts of considerable problems faced by individuals in obtaining Australian Consumer Law remedies for suppliers’ violations of mandatory consumer guarantees (eg of “acceptable quality”, including reasonable durability). Over the last decade, suppliers may have learned not to expressly disclaim ACL obligations (risking enforcement action and fines), but also that consumers need to prove a product defect, and may be particularly prone therefore not to provide remedies since the lockdowns and other impediments to accessing justice since 2020. Our presentation looks at the extent and types of problems experienced, analyses the current ACL regime, and proposes various substantive and procedural reforms to generate better consumer redress and therefore supplier behaviour.

ANJeL-in-Europe 2021 Workshop: “Japanese Law: Connections and Interactions”

ANJeL was pleased to host this informal research webinar on 10 July, aimed at members in or closely connected with Europe, hosted by Prof Giorgio Colombo (Nagoya U) and Luca Siliquini-Cinelli (Dundee). It follows the successful inaugural symposium held at the University of Pavia in late 2019 (thankfully just before the pandemic), hosted by Giorgio as ANJeL-in-Europe coordinator. Six presentations and some linked materials are set out below. After the lively webinar, Giorgio hosted an even livelier “virtual izakaya” (nijikai) via the free Spatial Chat platform – a first for most of us and certainly for ANJeL!

Opening Remarks – Giorgio F. COLOMBO, Luca Siliquini-Cinelli1.

1. Japan’s Earliest Women Pioneers in Law Teaching — Brief Introductions of their Stories – Mark LEVIN  

[click here for Powerpoints and here for his Youtube video presentation on the wider project and paper on “Presence and Voice: The History and Status Quo of Women Law Professors in Japan“]

2. Revisiting Ramseyer: The Chicago School of Law and Economics Comes to Japan – Luke NOTTAGE  (with Craig FREEDMAN)

[Click above for paper, see below * for Abstract, and click here for Powerpoints]

3. Japan’s Low Litigation Rate: Lessons from the Labor Tribunal System – Wered BEN-SADE

4. The Japanese Unequal Treaties: From their Signing Until Their Renegotiation – Béatrice JALUZOT

5. IP-related rights and Free Trade Agreements (FTAs): A Japanese Approach – Matteo DRAGONI

6. Japan, the European Union and Global Governance – Dimitri VANOVERBEKE [click here for Powerpoints and here for his related new co-edited book]

* Freedman, Craig and Nottage, Luke R., Revisiting Ramseyer: The Chicago School of Law and Economics Comes to Japan (June 17, 2021). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3868698

Abstract: Mark Ramseyer has been a leading force in bringing to bear the methods of Law and Economics to an increasingly ambitious analysis of the Japanese legal and economic systems. He has deliberately assumed an iconoclastic position in debunking a number of widely-held beliefs about Japan. More recently he has engendered a bitter degree of controversy by idiosyncratically analysing Korean “comfort women” and residents in Tokyo before and during World War II. In this paper we examine Ramseyer’s long contribution to Japanese studies and conclude that he has too frequently let ideological objectives, paralleling three key tenets of the Chicago School of economics, interfere with what should be cool-headed analysis. While asking many of the right questions, prompting often helpful responses and further research, he unfortunately has let a priori assumptions determine his answers. Ramseyer has proven reluctant to review his assessments or implications, largely dismissing contrary evidence.

Keywords: comparative law, Asian law, corporate governance, consumer law and policy, Japanese studies, economic history, market fundamentalism, rational choice theory, social science methodology

Guest Blog: COVID-19 in Asia – China, Japan, Indonesia and Malaysia in Focus

Written by: Hao Yang Joshua Mok, student intern at the Centre for Asian and Pacific Law at the University of Sydney (CAPLUS)

On 28 May 2021, the University of Victoria’s Centre for Asia-Pacific Initiatives (CAPI), together with the University of Sydney’s Centre for Asian and Pacific Law (CAPLUS) and the Australian Network for Japanese Law (ANJeL), hosted an online webinar celebrating the publication of ‘Covid-19 in Asia – Law and Policy Context’. A recording of the webinar may be accessed here.

Edited by Prof. Victor V. Ramraj and published by Oxford University Press, the book is a collected volume on Covid-19 law and policy issues in Asia. It draws upon the work of sixty-one authors from seventeen jurisdictions and aims to capture the initial responses of governments in response to the pandemic and highlight likely enduring legal and policy challenges.

The online webinar drew on four chapters of the book, focusing on China, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Japan’s responses to the pandemic.

  • The China chapter was presented by A/Prof. Feng Xu from the University of Victoria and discussed by A/Prof. Jeanne Huang from the University of Sydney.
  • The Indonesia chapter was presented by Dr. Nadirsyah Hosen from Monash University and discussed by Prof. Simon Butt from the University of Sydney.
  • The Malaysia chapter was presented by Dr. Azmil Tayeb from Universiti Sains Malaysia.
  • The Japan chapter was presented by Prof. Shigenori Matsui from the University of British Columbia. Prof. Luke Nottage from the University of Sydney briefly discussed both the Malaysia and Japan chapters.

A/Prof. Xu began her presentation with a reflection of China’s largely successful Covid-19 response. She suggested that we must contextualize China’s experience as an interrelationship between coercion and consent: China’s success in imposing and enforcing strict lockdown and quarantine measures required the acceptance and consent of individuals to those conditions. Turning to the book chapter itself, A/Prof. Xu suggested that China’s emergency response involved the mass mobilization of political, economic, and social resources. While effective, such measures came at a huge cost to individual rights. A/Prof. Xu concluded that the most immediate challenge for China will be the roll-out of its vaccination program.

A/Prof. Huang echoed this theme of consent and emphasized the limited scope of the right to privacy and personal information in China. While this allowed health administrators to access personal data when managing the pandemic, it reflects the tension between coercion and consent. Drawing on her area of focus, A/Prof. Huang provided some brief remarks on civil litigation against China arising out of the pandemic – raising issues of jurisdiction and service – as well as on China’s response to foreign criticism, exemplified by its trade dispute with Australia.

Dr. Hosen suggested that the Jokowi administration’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic had been too little, too late. Despite growing cases in South East Asia in early January, the government did not impose lockdown measures but rather further opened up the country. While the government eventually escalated its measures, the pandemic was already in full swing. Dr. Hosen argued that there were four barriers that contributed to the slow response and ineffectiveness of governmental measures: first, the unhealthy relationship between the Indonesian Medical Association and the Minister of Health Affairs; second, the political rivalry between President Jokowi’s administration and the current governor of Jakarta; third, the incompetence of the Jokowi cabinet; finally, the position of conservative religious groups in rejecting the request not to organize mass prayers.

In Prof. Butt’s discussion, he suggested that issues of governance, politicking, and religion are not new issues for Indonesia. Rather, they have been brought to sharp relief by the pandemic. Moreover, putting aside the government’s shortcomings, the size and geography of Indonesia presents significant difficulty. Prof. Butt concluded that looking forward, the biggest difficulty for Indonesia would be to obtain and administer vaccines in the face of those persistent issues.

Dr. Tayeb discussed issue of improvised pandemic policy and democratic regression in Malaysia. In the lead up to the Covid-19 pandemic, Malaysia was experiencing a volatile political environment which eventually resulted in a new coalition coming into power in late February 2020. Shortly thereafter, Covid-19 emerged, and the government responded by implementing strict lockdown measures. While those measures were initially successful, the country experienced a turning point. Under the backdrop of a continued power struggle, state by-elections were occurring without much restriction. This led to another wave of Covid-19 cases. Dr. Tayeb suggested that throughout the pandemic, the government’s response evinced incoherency. Moreover, the government has been using the pandemic to avoid the convening of parliament, undermining notions of accountability and transparency.

Prof. Matsui suggested that Japan was ill-prepared to deal with the pandemic and its eventual response was slow and insufficient. The difficulty was with Japan’s fragmented and restrictive infectious disease legal infrastructure. While the government eventually revised its statute and declared a state of emergency, only soft measures were imposed, because of initial legal constraints and the effectiveness of social norms. Fortunately, infection rates and death toll remained low in Japan throughout 2020. Now, however, Japan has experienced a resurgence in Covid-19 cases and there is a growing fear that this will worsen with the Tokyo Olympics. The biggest issue ahead for Japan is with its vaccination program, especially given concerns about vaccine hesitancy among the public.

Prof. Nottage went on to compare Malaysia and Japan’s responses during the Covid-19 pandemic. He suggested that in terms of balancing public health, civil liberties, and economic activity, Japan appeared to be quite successful. Prof. Nottage queried the reasons behind vaccine hesitancy this year, especially given the communitarian norms evident last year, as vaccination programs constitute the next complex phase in pandemic management in Australia, across Asia and world-wide.

Japanese Studies (& Law): JSAA conference focused on “Sustainability, Longevity and Mobility”

[Updated 13 September 2021] ANJeL has coordinated two Panels related to Japanese law, as below, for the upcoming biannual conference of the Japanese Studies Association of Australia. Due to the ongoing pandemic the 2021 conference will be a virtual event delivered via Zoom. The conference theme is ‘Sustainability, Longevity and Mobility’ and details can be found at https://languages-cultures.uq.edu.au/event/session/5776. The dates for the conference remain September 28th to October 1st 2021. Due to the nature of virtual delivery the format for the conference will be quite different from past years and registration costs will be reduced. There will be a virtual postgraduate workshop held during the conference as well.

  1. Stream 3.6 (Friday 1 October 1-2.30pm): “Japanese Law and Methodological Diversity”

The three presentations engage with diverse methodological perspectives that can be adopted to analyse Japanese law and society. Luke Nottage and Craig Freedman uncover three key tenets of the post-War Chicago School of economics, adapted by J Mark Ramseyer in analysing an increasingly broad swathe of fields, beyond the economic sphere to include recently and controversially the history of “comfort women”. They warn against letting this or any ideology skew logical arguments or factual determinations. Ayako Harada instead applies a methodology incorporating cultural and institutional perspectives to examine child custody dispute resolution in Japan. Leon Wolff ends by exploring the explanatory power of emotions and affect in explaining reconfiguration of legal relations in Japan.

“Revisiting Ramseyer: The Chicago School of Law and Economics Comes to Japan” (Prof Luke Nottage, co-authored with retired A/Prof Craig Freedman)

Mark Ramseyer has been a leading force in bringing to bear the methods of Law and Economics to an increasingly ambitious analysis of the Japanese legal and economic systems. He has deliberately assumed an iconoclastic position in debunking a number of widely-held beliefs about Japan. More recently he has engendered a bitter degree of controversy by idiosyncratically analysing Korean “comfort women” and residents in Tokyo before and during World War II. In this paper we examine Ramseyer’s long contribution to Japanese studies and conclude that he has too frequently let ideological objectives, paralleling three key tenets of the Chicago School of economics, interfere with what should be cool-headed analysis. While asking many of the right questions, prompting often helpful responses and further research, he unfortunately has let a priori assumptions determine his answers. Ramseyer has proven reluctant to review his assessments or implications, largely dismissing contrary evidence.

Luke Nottage, Professor of Comparative and Transnational Business Law, University of Sydney Law School, Co-Director of the Australian Network for Japanese Law (ANJeL). Luke specialises in arbitration, contract law, consumer product safety law and corporate governance, with a particular interest in Japan and the Asia-Pacific, and has produced 18 books and hundreds of articles and chapters. He is also Associate Director of the Centre for Asian and Pacific Law at the University of Sydney, Managing Director of Japanese Law Links Pty Ltd and Special Counsel with Williams Trade Law.

“Child Custody Dispute Resolution in Japan: A Cultural and Institutional Perspective” (Prof Ayako Harada)

This paper describes the background and the current situation of parental child custody disputes in Japan. It discusses the possibility of joint-custody legislation and its potential difficulties in effectively managing such disputes in Japanese cultural and institutional context.

Ayako Harada, Professor at Nagoya University Graduate School of Law’s Department of the Combined Graduate Program in Law and Political Science. Prof Harada specialises in legal sociology, history and theory, having graduated from Kyoto University and worked at Waseda University before joining Nagoya University. A major field of research and writing is family law dispute resolution.

“Japanese Law: Once More with Feeling” (A/Prof Leon Wolff)

Emotions enrich our lives. They define our passions and interests; they give colour to our life events; and, as e-motions, they move us to make choices and decisions. The psychological and neurological sciences have long dismissed the false dichotomy between the unruly horse of the emotions and the calm rider of the intellect. And although sociologists and cultural critics have drawn inspiration from these scientific traditions to develop feeling rules and affect theory to explain transformations in social relations, legal sociologists have kept their feelings in check — at least in their scholarly accounts. This paper explores the explanatory power of emotions and affect in explaining reconfiguration of legal relations in Japan. It considers the different conceptualisations of feelings, their corporeal and psychic dimensions, how they manifest intra- and inter-subjectively, and the methodological challenges involved in accessing, operationalising and analysing emotions to make better ‘sense’ of Japanese law and society. This paper argues that emotions, as forces that drive movement, offer richer possibilities for explaining socio-legal change than current, more static material accounts based on national character, institutional design, politics or rational choice models.

Leon Wolff, previously Associate Professor of Law at the Queensland University of Technology and PhD candidate at the Griffith Asia Institute, was founding co-director of the Australian Network for Japanese Law (ANJeL). Specialising in Japanese law and society, Leon is currently working on a project on the role of emotions and affect on legal change and justice in Japan.

Discussant: Associate Professor Trevor Ryan teaches Legal Theory, Constitutional Law and other classes at Canberra Law School, where he is Program Director of the Juris Doctor. Trevor’s main research interests are elder law, disability, and legal education, with a comparative law interest in Japan. Trevor has published on a range of topics including dementia, guardianship and private law; the right to housing; and the role of stakeholders in shaping legal education. 

2. Stream 3.1 Weds 29 Sept 12.30-2pm: “The Shadow of Japanese Law – How Sports Elites and the Marginalised Poor Skirt the Law”

This panel has two presentations exploring the surprising ways corruption and crime function in Japan despite the criminal law. The presentations focus on the two extremes of Japanese society — the elite (professional sumo athletes) and the poor (elderly prisoners who now occupy a significant proportion of the incarcerated). Both presentations explore the surprising ways the elite and the marginalised ignore, invoke and side-step the law to achieve socio-economic goals.

“Subverting the Prison: Stigma, Strategy and Japan’s Aging Inmates” (Carol Lawson, University of Tokyo Law Faculty)

Prison populations are aging across all industrialised jurisdictions. However, in Japan, the growth in older prison admissions has long been outstripping the rate of aging in society as a whole. Nearly 38% of admissions were aged 50 or more in 2018, and there is strong evidence that some older Japanese are leveraging the prison system as de facto aged care. This paper explores the confluence of social disintegration and poverty that have contributed to Japan’s grey crime wave. It then examines the role of legal consciousness in this sociolegal phenomenon. Specifically, the paper analyses data collected from 1500 prisoners in 2016 using Valerie Braithwaite’s ‘motivational postures’ heuristic to show how marginalised older Japanese with compliant attitudes to authority have repeatedly embraced the stigmatising criminal identity to receive law’s protection. Finally, it demonstrates how this deft subversion of prisons to meet individual care needs has driven previously inconceivable legal and social change, rewriting the rule book on criminal justice regulation in Japan – without reliance on rights discourse.

Carol Lawson commenced as Associate Professor of (Anglo-American) Law at the University of Tokyo Law Faculty in September 2021. Before that she was the Minter Ellison Research Associate at the University of New South Wales Faculty of Law and a doctoral candidate at the Australian National University. She works on regulation and global governance with a focus on criminal justice regulation and closed environments. Her approach is through a comparative sociolegal lens, using mixed methods to carry out empirical research. She is completing a study on the nature and impact of civil prison oversight in Japan and Australia, and planning a project on regulating closed environments in the aged care sector. An insight common to both studies is the importance of developing a granular understanding of regulatees’ compliance postures before attempting a regulatory intervention. She teaches courses in Japanese and Anglo-American law, and coaches in the Tokyo Intercollegiate Negotiation Competition. She also serves on the Japan Law Translation Council and as an expert adviser to the Japanese legal translation community, including on plain legal language.

“Integrity and corruption in sport: Lessons from Japan and match-fixing in sumo” (Matt Nichol, CQU [presenter*] with Elisa Solomon and Keiji Kawai

Professional sumo in Japan provides a different perspective on corruption in sport due to the long-standing and until recently accepted tradition of match-fixing in makuuchi and jûryô, the two highest divisions of wrestling known as sekitori. As sports gambling is generally illegal under Japan’s Criminal Code, match-fixing in sumo is not related to gambling. Instead fixing is largely the result of the promotion rules, where rikishi (‘wrestlers’) with a losing record in one of the six annual tournaments face demotion in rank and division, and with it, the loss of status and income of competing in sekitori. Evidence surfaced in the 1990s and 2000s of match-fixing involving wrestlers with above expected winning records when facing a losing record in the last days of a tournament. A police investigation into illegal gambling in baseball in 2011 led to evidence of fixing involving a number of rikishi and resulted in an investigation by the Japan Sumo Association that confirmed the first official cases of match-fixing in sumo. This chapter will examine the cultural, institutional and sumo specific factors that encourage fixing and how trust was restored with the public, fans and sponsors after the 2011 fixing scandal

* Matt Nichol is a Lecturer in Law at the College of Business at Central Queensland University (Melbourne Campus, Spencer Street Melbourne VIC 3000). His research focuses on labour mobility, labour regulation and wages in professional baseball in the United States and Japan. Matt has also researched free agency and corporate governance in the Australian Football League. Matt’s research utilises regulatory theory, approaches to labour and the principle that labour is not a commodity to examine the regulation of labour in professional sport. In 2019, Matt’s book Globalization, Sports Law and Labour Mobility: The Case of Professional Baseball in the United States and Japan was published by Edward Elgar Publishing.

Elisa Solomon is an Asia-Paciic Employment Relations Specialist with Bristol Myers Squibb, and a Research Assistant with Monash University, Australia. Elisa is a lawyer with experience researching and advising on labour laws and regulations in the Asia-Pacific, and holds a Master of Laws. Having worked in both the public and the private sector in Japan, Elisa is experienced in conducting research on Japanese laws and policies. Elisa has conducted research on laws surrounding workers’ protections in Japan, participation of women in Parliament, and the assessment of directors’ liability in Australia and Japan. She has previously worked for the International Labour Organization in Thailand on a regional project analysing countries’ compliance with the Bali Declaration.

Keiji Kawai is a Professor of Sport Law in the Department of Policy Studies at Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan. His book, The Legal Status of Professional League Players (2003), was awarded the Okinaga Prize by the Labor Research Center. He served as Visiting Researcher at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst from 2007 to 2009. Keiji was the General Secretary of the Japan Sports Law Association from 2017 to 2019 and is also on the arbitrator panel at the Japan Sports Arbitration Agency. He was an executive board member of the Nippon Basketball League from 2013 to 2015. He is currently conducting comparative studies funded by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science on sports accidents and compensation.

Discussant: Associate Professor Trevor Ryan teaches Legal Theory, Constitutional Law and other classes at Canberra Law School, where he is Program Director of the Juris Doctor. Trevor’s main research interests are elder law, disability, and legal education, with a comparative law interest in Japan. Trevor has published on a range of topics including dementia, guardianship and private law; the right to housing; and the role of stakeholders in shaping legal education. 

Re-imagining the Japan-Australia (international arbitration) relationship

As a submission to the ANU’s Australia-Japan Research Centre project on “Reimagining the Japan Relationship”, funded by the DFAT-linked Australia-Japan Foundation, I have submitted the concluding chapter of my newly-published book: International Commercial and Investor-State Arbitration: Australia and Japan in Regional and Global Contexts (Elgar, 2021), which will be launched by Chief Justice Allsop of the Federal Court of Australia on 17 June 2021.

The book tracks the historical evolution of international arbitration, as the primary mechanism for resolving cross-border business disputes nowadays, in the direction of more globalisation but also more formalisation – reflecting in growing costs and delays. The COVID-19 pandemic has belatedly forced international arbitration mostly online, and new practices will likely persist as travel restrictions are eased (Part I). However, to maximise those possibilities and keep reducing costs and delays, there should be more structured and sustained bilateral cooperation between governments, law reform initiatives, arbitral institutions, judges, lawyers and academics (Part II).

Arb-Med for International Arbitration: in Japan, not Australia?

Active settlement facilitation by arbitrators in Japan, mirroring mediation by judges following the historically German/Austrian civil procedure law tradition, remains quite persuasive. This was evident from JCAA statistics analysed a decade ago by Prof Tatsuya Nakamura, prompting my commentary on this Blog (incorporated into chapter 4 of my new Elgar book, to be launched Thursday 17 June 2021 by Chief Justice Allsop of the Federal Court of Australia). Australia has also experimented with statutory Arb-Med provisions in New South Wales from 1990, and nation-wide from 2010 for domestic arbitrations under a more restrictive model, but Arb-Med has been far less popular in practice. The 2021 Rules of the Australian Centre for International Commercial Arbitration ended up not including Arb-Med provisions, but they were included (based largely on the 2010 legislation for domestic arbitration) in the September 2020 Consultation Draft Rules, so draft Article 55 reproduced below.

My analysis for the Kluwer Arbitration Blog (posted 1 May 2021) examines this topic in more detail. I suggest those draft Rule provisions could still be adapted anyway for individual contracts by parties and legal advisors (especially those from or familiar with Japan), other arbitral institutions (such as the JCAA) or legislators.

55. Mediation by an Arbitrator

55.1 An arbitrator may act as a mediator in relation to the dispute or a part of the dispute between the parties if each party has consented in writing prior to the arbitrator so acting.

55.2 If an arbitrator acts as a mediator, the arbitral proceedings must be stayed to facilitate the conduct of the mediation proceedings.

55.3 An arbitrator who is acting as a mediator:

(a) may communicate with the parties collectively or separately; and

(b) must treat any confidential information obtained from a party as confidential and for the purposes of these Rules, any information provided by one party to the arbitrator which that party: (i) has not provided to all the other parties; or (ii) has not expressly agreed can be provided to all the other parties, shall be treated as confidential.

55.4 If, during the course of any mediation, confidential information is obtained by the arbitrator and if the mediation terminates without a settlement of the entire dispute being reached, before recommencing the arbitration:

(a) the arbitrator must inform the parties if he or she has obtained confidential information during the mediation; and

(b) after so informing the party, the arbitrator must obtain the express written consent of all the parties before resuming to act as an arbitrator.

55.5 Following the termination of any mediation, no objection may be taken to the future involvement in the arbitration proceedings by the arbitrator on the grounds that the arbitrator acted as a mediator in relation to the dispute:

(a) if the arbitrator obtains the express written consent of all the parties to the arbitration required by Article 55.1; or

(b) if the arbitrator did not obtain any confidential information during the course of the mediation.

55.6 If an arbitrator has obtained confidential information during the course of any mediation and all parties do not consent to the resumption of the arbitration proceedings by the arbitrator, the arbitrator’s appointment is taken to have been terminated. Upon such termination, a replacement arbitrator is to be confirmed or appointed pursuant to the procedure by which the arbitrator being replaced was confirmed or appointed, except that:

(a) if there is a sole arbitrator, and if within [40] days of the parties authorising the arbitrator to act as mediator the parties have not reached agreement on the choice of a replacement sole arbitrator and provided written evidence of their agreed nomination to ACICA, the replacement sole arbitrator shall be appointed by ACICA with a mandate to commence upon termination of the appointment of the arbitrator who acted as mediator; or

(b) if there are three arbitrators, and if within [60] days of the parties authorising one or more arbitrators to act as mediator the parties have not reached agreement on the choice of one or more replacement arbitrators arbitrator and provided written evidence of their agreed nomination to ACICA, the replacement sole arbitrator(s) shall be appointed by ACICA with a mandate to commence upon termination of the appointment of the arbitrator(s) who acted as mediator.