Home | Databases | WorldLII | Search | Feedback Edited Legal Collections Data

Green, Stephen; Nottage, Luke --- "In defence of Japan: government lawyers and judicial system reforms" [2015] ELECD 478; in Wolff, Leon; Nottage, Luke; Anderson, Kent (eds), "Who Rules Japan?" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2015) 63

Book Title: Who Rules Japan?

Editor(s): Wolff, Leon; Nottage, Luke; Anderson, Kent

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781849804103

Section: Chapter 4

Section Title: In defence of Japan: government lawyers and judicial system reforms

Author(s): Green, Stephen; Nottage, Luke

Number of pages: 45

Abstract/Description:

The June 2001 final Recommendations to the Japanese Prime Minister from the Justice System Reform Council (JSRC, shihokaikaku iinkai) included various reforms to the legal system geared to moving Japan from direct ex ante regulation by public authorities to ex post relief through the judicial system. The aim of this brave new deregulated world was to substitute more indirect socio-economic ordering with incentives for corporations and other actors to seek judicial relief. To realise the reforms, including building a justice system to warrant citizens’ trust and hence to facilitate their greater use of the legal system, the JSRC highlighted a concomitant need for increased financial and human resources. The JSRC acknowledged the need to coordinate the institutional base of the legal system while expanding human resources and establishing popular participation. In respect of human resources, the JSRC recommended raising both the ‘quality and quantity’ of legal professionals. In 1999, when the JSRC was established, the total number of legal professionals was 20,730; approximately one legal professional per 6,110 citizens. Given this situation another JSRC recommendation was to ‘aim, deliberately and as soon as possible, to secure 3000 new entrants to the legal profession annually’. Although not explicitly stated in the JSRC Recommendations the broad reforms implied an expectation that citizens would increasingly use the legal system to regulate their private relationships and their relationships with the state and its organs.