Abstract
In Japan, there have been a number of arguments by the scholars majoring in the Japanese Constitution who recommend to enact a FOIA (Freedom of Informaton Act) on the grounds that "We, the Japanese people" in fact have people's right to know, guaranteed through the Constitution of Japan, Article XXI. On the other hand, there remain a few number of the constitutional scholars and some of administrative law who contend the definition of the right to know as a legal right is not necessarily clear and credible enough to be identifiable with as a judicially executable right on the constitutional law by the Supreme Court. In such circumstances, a subcommittee of the Administrative Reform Committee, in November 1996, proposed a draft of the FOIA which claims the right to seek disclosure of government information based on not the right to know, but on the ideal of popular sovereignty. This study is designed, first, to consider whether it is reasonable that the right to claim open government should be bases, as each of the different arguments has insisted that it should be, on the right to know or on the ideal of popular sovereignty. Second, this study attempts to interpret both the text of the U.S. Constitution and the Constitution of Japan in comparative style in order to analyze the constitutional dynamics over the FOIA from a standpoint of the governmental structure. Third, in concluding that neither of the contentions is reasonable, it attempts to suggest alternatively the "We, the Japanese people" should rather base the newly-established right in the FOIA on the principle of polular sovereignty in the constitutional law, so that "We, the Japanese people" could monitor the government activities more adequately than in another way.
