A reexamination of the major reform of Japan's judiciary in 1913

Abstract

In 1913 five major pieces of legislation were passed to totally revamp Japan’s judiciary system, resulting in the elimination of 128 of the existing 312 judicial districts and the dismissal of 232 judges and public prosecutors out the total 1510 holding office at that time. In addition, a provision was added to the Court Organization Act making it possible to transfer judges against their will. The present article is an attempt to clarify in what manner judicial issues were addressed and its impact during that time through an investigation of the discourse surrounding the major judicial reforms of 1913.
In the legal provisions regarding the dismissal of judges and public prosecutors, judges, the number of whose appointments had been fixed independently and who enjoyed higher levels of status security, were now put on an equal footing with prosecutors, as only the total number of dismissals between the two offices was determined. Consequently, the reduction in the number of judges was overwhelmingly larger than the minor decrease in prosecutors. Then a strict vetting of prosecutors was conducted, which resulted in the dismissal of far more than the reduced number of appointments.
While the procedures for dismissal and the Courts Organization Act reform bill threatened to hamper the independence enjoyed by court presiding officers, the discourse at the time tended to concentrate on issues directly related to the elimination of district courts in terms of the interests of the general public, resulting in rather lackluster deliberations in the Imperial Diet. Although new provisions had been introduced which clearly threatened the status security of judges, such issues were not sufficiently taken up in the Diet deliberations, due to the existence of other points of debate more easily open to dispute.
It was in this way that due to the new legislation being uncritically enacted, the term “occupation” (shoku 職) as appearing in Clause II of Article 58 of the Imperial Constitution, containing provisions regarding the status security of judges, became understood as meaning “official” (kan 官), as the interpretation that even if a court “officer” is not dismissed, he can be relieved of his “duties” was adopted in 1921.
The reasons why the independence of the judiciary was not sufficiently guaranteed under the Meiji Constitution include not only 1) the priority given to the Ministry of Justice over the courts in the Courts Organization Act, but also 2) the reinterpretations of the law gradually conducted by administrative authorities, 3) amendments made to the law, and 4) a serious dearth of resistance to such actions on the part of Diet members, judges and legal scholars. In sum, the major judicial reform of 1925 is one excellent example how the hollowing out of independence on the part of the officers presiding over the courts was promoted by not only the Ministry of Justice and the Imperial Diet, but also the field of jurisprudence itself.