Legal thought is a thought on law. Not only jurists and philosophers but also practicing lawyers and even laymen working in the everyday life of the community have a legal thought of their own. Then, in what process are their legal thoughts formed individually and what roles are they assigned with in the community? From the wide point of view of the structure of society, how are those various legal thoughts related to each other to form the factors creating public opinion or to develope the theories for social reforms or maintenance of the status quo?
To study such legal thought, there are perhaps two methods. One method is to approach to a legal thought in connection with the structure of society, whereby to try to find a clue to the explanation of its formation, role, or function. This is the method of studying legal thought from the point of view of the history of society. In the field of the modern sociology of law, this may be said to correspond to the sociological study of legal thought. Thus legal thought comes into being and functions under restriction of the frame or structure of the society in which the persons who hold the thought live.
On the other hand, when a legal thought is formed and expressed it becomes an objective being which is independent of its creator's original view and is able to be interpreted. In other words, it acquires a meaning of its own. If it is the case, there might possibly be a way to study the specific meaning of a legal thought or inquire how it relates to those of the same or former or later age, whereby to try to understand it in the aspect of its internal development. In that case, it seems quite natural and reasonable to refer to the mental climate as a culture medium, so to speak, in which the legal thought has been brought up. This is the method of studying legal thought from the point of view of the history of thought.
But how are these methods related to each other? Here lies an important problem. The author attempts to sketch a composition, that is, a theory of legal thought in order to appreciate and judge various legal thoughts of the day, starting with the explanation of the relation between the two methods while inquiring the transition of the meaning of concepts, such as authority, reason, liberty, equality, law of nature and so forth, and proceeding to the analysis, by using the two methods, of the scope and the movement process of legal thought.

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In the short article titled as above, the author presents the thoughts of two Japanese legal philosophers in the Meiji era, Dr. Ju Nakajima and Prof. Takamasa Mitani, both of whom were protestants.
In the beginning, the author treats of Dr. Nakajima. His religious idea belonged to that of Rev. Danjo Ebina, a typical theologian of the Doshisha (Uuiv.) School, and that of Dr. Sakuzo Yoshino of the University of Tokyo. Dr. Nakajima, influenced by MacIver and other advocates of the pluralistic conception of the State and afterwards by Mr. Toyohiko Kagawa, had faith in Social Christianity. And in the legal aspect of his thought, he held the view of social liberalism which subordinates the law to the moral and religion, on the basic idea that the State is a means of God to create a community.
And next, the author presents Prof. Mitani's religious idea. He, being guided by the Christian faith of Dr. Inazo Nitobe and Mr. Kanzo Uchimura who had been taught and enlightened by Prof. Clerk, and after studying the Kantian philosophy, became an ardent admirer of the medieval philosophy of Augustinus, and at last came to establish a legal philosophy of self-abnegation, which puts religion first and others second and opposes individualism, liberalism and modernism.
Prior to these statements, the author mentioned the scientific legal thought of Dr. Kazutami Ukita of Waseda University, a contemporary with Rev. D. Ebina at Doshisha University, but whose thought did not directly influence them above. His legal thought, the ground of which was the complete recognition of the human right, took the lead of the Japanese Christian's legal thoughts in and after the Meiji era.
Accordingly, the content of the article is as follows; (1) Japanese Christians in the Meiji era, (2) Kazutami Ukita, a forerunner of Christian legal thinker in Japan, (3) legal thought of Ju Nakajima, its relation to Danjo Ebina and Sakuzo Yoshino, (4) legal thought of Takamasa Mitani, a successor to the faith of Kanzo Uchimura, (5) conclusion.

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After the war, Japanese universities were reorganized into an institution not only for prosecuting academic researches as before but also for giving the people higher education in order to bring up “citizens”, and the number of universities has remarkably increased as compared with prewar days. In particular, recent economic development of our country has brought the growing attention of the people to university and the growing number of high school graduates who go on to universities. This tendency is also under the influence of the constitutional guarantee of the right to receive education. Likewise, the government has adopted, as one of its main policies, the policy of promoting the scientific technique and cultivating the people's ability, so that the problems of university system and education have often aroused public attention and discussion. Under such social condition, a matter which is always and hotly discussed is “university autonomy”.
“University autonomy” in Japan had developed as a “custom” at the prewar Imperial Universities, the basic idea of which gave the faculty meeting an autonomy as to its human affairs, so as to maintain freedom of research. But after the Taisho era, when reformative thoughts such as socialism developed, the government authority hand in hand with the militarists exerted pressure upon the thoughts and opinions of progressive scholars, and by so doing frequently violated “university autonomy” as well as “academic freedom”.
Through such experience before the war, we acquired after the war the constitutional guarantee of “academic freedom” and legal guarantee for the university's control over the human affairs of its teaching staff. However, “university autonomy” remains to be and is prevailingly considered to be a “custom” which has been practiced from the prewar days.
Now, what is the reason why many troubles have happened in succession over this “university autonomy”, in spite of the constitutional guarantee of “academic freedom” and partial legal guarantee of “university autonomy”? It is worthy of discussion. Although many reasons may be pointed out, the author thinks the main reason may be found in the fact that the “university autonomy” has seldom become an object of scientific study because it has been a “custom” in the exact meaning, and that we have lacked in historical studying about the “Imperial Universities” which established the “custom”.
On this hypothesis, the author discussed the development of the thought and custom of “university autonomy” in Japan before the war and the historical function of the Imperial Universities as the source of such thought and custom. The summary of the article is as follows.
Section I. To make out the meaning and the background of the subject, the author explains the transition from the constitution and the underlying principle of it under the prewar Meiji Constitution to those under the postwar Constitution of Japan, and the difference of the constitutional guarantee and treatment of “academic freedom” and “university autonomy” under those two Constitutions.
Section II. The birth of the University of Tokyo as the first modern university in Japan; its reorganization into the “Imperial University” by the first Education Minister, Arinori Mori, in 1886 when the Ordinance of Imperial University and other school ordinances were framed; the process in which this “Tokyo Imperial University” came to be established as a model to subsequent Japanese universities and university institution; these matters are sketched.

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The process of development of Soviet legal thought has left a zigzag trace. Immediately after the October Revolution, the Soviet regime abrogated all the pre-revolution laws, but it fully recognized the merits of statute law and energetically enacted new legislations. Lenin, laying stress upon the principle of revolyutsionnaya zakonnosti (revolutionary legality), demanded rigid observance of the law of all the civil servants and citizens. At the same time, however, he understood that it was unavoidable to take exceptional measures under the exceptional circumstances of rebellions and armed interventions of foreign countries.
In the period of New Economic Policy, the Russian Communist Party decided to strengthen the principle of revolyutsionnaya zakonnosti in order to furnish citizens the protection of their rights. To realize the zakonnosti, civil code, criminal code and other several codes were established. Lenin mentioned the prompt enactment of legislation as one of the characteristics of the Soviet law.
The legal thought in the Stalin days was not that of “monolith”. On the one hand, Stalin and Vyshinsky insisted upon “putting aside the law” under the pretense of “class struggle”. On the other hand, Soltz, Kalinin and Stuchka gave weight to the role of law in socialism, and insisted upon the necessity for protecting citizens' rights.
Therefore, the change in the Soviet legal thought after Stalin's death is never a “mutation”. It is a result and a development of the anti-Stalin thought in the Stalin age.

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In the modern Chinese legal science, what has come to be of importance as the matter of comparative law is the comparative study on the subjects, such as “rule of law”, “Rechtsstaat” and principles of the socialistic system of law. In addition to this, in the recent development of the study of socialistic law, the comparative study of Shofa, which means a Chinese problem of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and zakohhoctb, which means a principle of jurisprudence of the Soviet Union, gives rise to a new problem. This new problem is discussed at the outset of the article.
And then, the characteristics of Chinese law are introduced, according to Mao Tse-tung's “About the Problem of Solving the Contradictions among th Peoples” which has greatly influenced the fundamental idea of Chinese legal thought.
In the rest of the article, following subjects are taken up; principle of the superiority of mass line, which shapes the central idea of Chinese legal thought, general line for the transition period, and other new problems in the modern Chinese legal science. These matters in the article are studied depending upon the recent articles in a reliable Chinese scientific periodical “Zhenfa Yanjiu (Research on Politics & Law)”.

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