Abstract
The lecture describes the fundamental principles of criminal law with particular focus on negligence. Generally, health care providers are most concerned with negligence, which is a crime under Japanese law. The purpose of criminal law is to protect the interests of society through deterrence of wrongdoings. Criminal law ordinarily imposes punishment on individuals who intentionally engage in conduct that violate the rights of others. Negligence is an exception in which punishment is imposed despite the absence of intent. Because intent is not an element, negligence has an inherent tendency to be interpreted broadly. The key question, therefore, is how to define the scope of the crime. Negligence requires a breach in two types of duties: a duty to foresee the consequence, which must be reasonably foreseeable, and a duty to avoid the consequence, which must be reasonably avoidable. The “principle of trust” plays an important role in defining what is reasonably avoidable. The criminal liability of a supervisor, which often becomes an issue in team-based medical practice, is limited under the “principle of trust.”
