About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

87 Tex. L. Rev. 1545 (2008-2009)
The Anatomy of a Conservative Court: Judicial Review in Japan

handle is hein.journals/tlr87 and id is 1563 raw text is: The Anatomy of a Conservative Court: Judicial Review in Japan David S. Law* The Supreme Court of Japan is widely and justifiably considered the most conservative constitutional court in the world. Drawing on interviews conducted in Japan with a variety of judges, officials, and scholars-including seven current and former members of the Supreme Court itself-this Article offers a political and institutional account of why the Court has failed to take an active role in the enforcement of Japan 's postwar constitution. This account yields a number of insights into the relationship between judicial politics and electoral politics, and the role of institutional design in mediating between the two. The fact that the Court is conservative is perhaps only to be expected given its longtime immersion in a conservative political environment: the center-right Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has held power almost without interruption for half a century. Much of the LDP's influence over the Court is disguised, however, by the institutional design of the judiciary, which appears to enjoy a considerable degree of autonomy to manage its own affairs and even to decide who will serve on the Supreme Court. What the LDP has done is, in effect, to delegate political control of the judiciary to ideologically reliable agents within Professor of Law and Professor of Political Science, Washington University in St. Louis. This Article is a substantially abridged version of a paper presented at the Texas Law Review symposium entitled What, If Anything, Do We Know About Constitutional Design? and at the 2009 comparative constitutional law roundtable held at the George Washington University Law School. The present version was presented at the 2009 annual meeting of the Law and Society Association in Denver. The underlying research and interviews were conducted during my three- month stay as a visiting associate professor at the Keio University Faculty of Law in Tokyo, with the generous financial support of an International Affairs Fellowship in Japan awarded by the Council on Foreign Relations and sponsored by the Hitachi Corporation. This Article and the research on which it is based would not have been possible without the extraordinary generosity and assistance of countless individuals in Japan, particularly my interviewees, many of whom cannot be named here for reasons of confidentiality. Those who can be named include former judges Haruhiko Abe and Yasuaki Miyamoto, and a number of scholars: Dan Foote, Stephen Givens, Yasuo Hasebe, Hiroshi Itoh, Colin Jones, Masako Kamiya, Shigenori Matsui, Setsuo Miyazawa, Shinichi Nishikawa, Yoshitomo Ode, Hideyuki Ohsawa, Larry Repeta, Takao Tanase, Hidenori Tomatsu, and Matt Wilson. Carl Green and Jiro Tamura kindly arranged my appointment at Keio University, while Jerry McAlinn helped to ensure that the appointment was a productive one. Shigenori Matsui, Setsuo Miyazawa, and two anonymous retired justices were instrumental in arranging key interviews. Norimitsu Shirai and Mizuna Sekine served brilliantly not only as research assistants and translators but also as guides to Japanese society. Kyosuke Takemura provided superlative help with Japanese-language research, translation, and data collection. Daphne Barak-Erez, Eric Feldman, Tom Ginsburg, John Haley, Lisa Hilbink, Dan Ho, Masako Kamiya, Ron Krotoszynski, Sandy Levinson, Clark Lombardi, H.W. Perry, and two anonymous Japanese district court judges provided helpful comments on early drafts. Last but not least, I wish to thank Sandy Levinson for the opportunity to participate in this symposium and the editors of the Texas Law Review for their tireless efforts.

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most