Historically, politics and the judiciary have always had a tense relationship. Japan’s postwar constitution explicitly provides that judicial administration is the exclusive preserve of the Judicial Assembly of the Supreme Court. Thus, unlike the prewar period, executive or legislative organs are institutionally unable to intervene directly in the budgetary or personnel affairs of the courts.

  During the 1960s and 1970s, however, the Supreme Court came into conflict with the government over the constitutionality of restricting basic worker rights among public sector employees. The government accused the Supreme Court of issuing biased decisions. In response, the Supreme Court maintained that the government should not interfere with judicial independence, while making a thinly veiled effort to restrict judges from joining the Young Lawyers Association and similar organizations in Japan. Where it was once external pressure that threatened the independence and integrity of judges, the threat now came from internal pressure―the Supreme Court’s self-imposed restraints. Indeed, in the 1990s, even the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court lamented the situation.

  The recent fierce debates over the Constitution illustrate the renewed danger of political interference in judicial affairs. There is an urgent need for reforms that align with the actualities of judiciary independence. Examples of this include measures to prevent the Cabinet―which appoints the Judges of the Supreme Court―from abusing this authority, and initiatives to ensure that inferior court judges can make decisions according to their conscience.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the rationales for public participation in the justice system, except public participation in the criminal justice system. Section 1 presents an introduction to this paper. This is followed by Section 2, which discusses the implication of the court and judge system based on the theory of representative democracy. The author argues that establishing courts by statute, trying cases by statute, the procedure for appointing judges, and the judge impeachment system should be recognized as one of public participation in the justice system. Section 3 outlines various public participation systems in civil justice, as well as analyzes their meaning. It should be noted that expertise is commonly expected in civil justice, though laymanship is pursued in criminal justice. In conclusion, it was found that rationales for public participation in the justice system are not uniform but vary depending on whether the case is civil or criminal.

The main objective of this paper is to clarify the decision making process of how local government councils cope with lawsuits. Although many researchers have maintained continuous interest in the process of how local government authorities (administrative executives) deal with lawsuit in their decision-making process, little study has been done to actually investigate the role and impacts of local government councils. Local government councils has voting rights on filing a lawsuits. The discussions of local government councilors can be classified into four frames according to the characteristics of discussion’s contents. (1) Offensive and defensive frame, (2) Monitoring frame, (3) Public opinion frame, and (4) Policy evaluation frame. Exploring two case studies in japan, it is suggested that for local government councils to enrich the debates concerning lawsuit decision making, more attention should be directed in further enhancing their policy evaluation abilities.

The aim of this paper is to clarify judicial process of the terrorist incidents in the early Showa era, focusing on the commutation campaign and how the justice department and the military authorities conducted judicial control against pressure from political forces. Then, clarify the actual situation of judicial rights and public opinion.

This paper pointed out the following two points. Firstly, after commencement of the military trial of the 5 · 15 incident, the commutation campaign became a national movement for the first time, but it stagnated after the navy side judgment. After that, the subject of the commutation campaign moved to nationalist groups. Secondly, in the 5 · 15 incident, the Navy tried to impose a penalty under the law. However, under the pressure of opposition allegations and Kanji Kato’s pressure, the Navy gave the defendant lenient sentences as well as the Army. But the justice department sought relative independence from the commutation campaign and political forces.

This paper analyzes the reasons the Constitutional Court of Korea (CCK) reached different decisions in its review of presidential impeachment between reinstalled Roh Moo-hyun and removed Park Geun-hye. Judicial politics matters in such a difference as CCK is also a political actor in its strategic interactions with the president, the legislature, the Supreme Court, and moreover the people.

  In the case of Roh Moo-hyun on a vote of 6-3, both the “inter-branch” and “partisan” models fit well. CCK justices appointed by the president were more benign in reviewing presidential impeachment than those selected by the other branches such as the legislature and the Supreme Court Chief Justice. Progressive justices were more hesitant in removing a progressive president than conservative ones. In the unanimous vote of Park Geun-hye’s case, the “sovereignty” model is valid. Irrespective of the differences in who selects and partisanship, the judiciary is ultimately accountable to the people.

The Judiciary in authoritarian regimes is regarded as submissive to the Executive. However, the Malaysian court, that is typically depicted as “submissively deferential” (Neudorf 2016) to the authoritarian government, have actually ruled against the government. Why does the court in an authoritarian regime “revolt” against the government and assert its independence?

  This study focuses on the epochal unconstitutional rulings on the laws restricting political freedom in the 2010s. Previously, the Malaysian court rarely found these laws unconstitutional by confining its role to a strict literal interpretation of the Constitution. However, the Court of Appeals found three legislations –Universities and University Colleges Act; Peaceful Assembly Act and Sedition Act― as unconstitutional with the logic that the role of the court was to examine the reasonableness and proportionality of these laws.

  The series of rulings were made possible by two factors: liberal precedents on the logic of constitutional interpretation; and the judges who contribute to the accumulation of the liberal reasoning. These judges didn’t have the motivation to play a “submissively deferential” role due to the slim prospect of their promotion to the apex court or the expectation of their post-retirement opportunity as legal counsels representing the opposition whose power had recently increased.

The American judiciary has exerted significant influences on American politics through the active exercise of judicial review. However, since invalidating statutes is accompanied by a normative tension with democracy and a risk of political backlash by its very nature, it would be no easy task for a court to step into active judicial review, let alone maintain it. Then, what factors have enabled the American judiciary to exercise judicial review actively?

  To answer this question, this article first theoretially examines the determinants of judicial behavior and reveals that a court needs to possess certain types of resources to engage in active review. After that, it investigates and identifies institutions and actors in the American judicial process that provide the judiciary with those necessary resources. This article intends to provide basic analytical tools and perspectives for a better understanding of judicial behavior from the standpoint of historical institutionalism.

This article analyzes the ‘crisis’ of the International Court of Justice after the Southwest Africa Case and clarifies the process of overcoming this difficult situation with the ICJ’s ‘positive’ strategies. Due to the conservative judgment on the Apartheid, Asian and African countries were deeply disappointed at the Court and relied on the political dispute in the General Assembly. As a result, the Court became isolated from the international community. In order to solve this problem, the Court took the positive attitude to the United States and delegations of the member states. (1) The President and judges attended the General Assembly and contacted with the organs of the UN and delegates of the member states. (2) The Court proposed the amendment of the Article 22 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice, “The seat of the Court shall be established at The Hague.” The Court used a tactical diplomacy and negotiated with other organs of the UN and the member states. The Court sought its independence with such positive strategies instead of its static isolation. In 1970s, the dispute of the reform of the ICJ was attenuated and the number of contentious cases increased gradually. It means that the ICJ founded its institutional consolidation.

Since 2000, newspaper circulations in Japan have rapidly declined, raising concerns about the negative impact on civic engagement. This article argues that the decline in the penetration rates of local newspapers have had a negative effect on voter turnout. I first use a natural experiment to investigate outcomes of the unexpected closure of The Kagoshima-Shinpo, a local newspaper in Kagoshima Prefecture, just prior to the Upper House election of 2004. I find that the extinction of this newspaper was associated with low voter turnout in the 2004 election, especially in districts where the paper had a higher penetration rate. I then analyze prefecture-level panel data to identify correlations between the penetration rates of local and national newspapers, and voter turnout in Upper House elections since 2001. I find that voter turnout was lower in prefectures that had a smaller penetration rate of local newspapers. These results suggest that local newspapers in Japan play an important role in stimulating political participation among citizens.

This article assesses recent attempts to establish the cooperation between normative and empirical studies on deliberative democracy. The past thirty years have seen rapid growth of mini-publics experiments that test the idealized assumptions identified by normative studies. In these experiments, some of the assumptions are affirmed. However, there are results of experiments that deny the idealized assumptions, which pose a question about the cooperation between the normative and empirical studies: how we should interpret the results that contradict the idealized assumptions. The preceding approaches to the cooperation advocate either having the normative assumptions transcend the implications of experiments or reducing the normative assumptions to the status-quo. I argue that the idealized assumptions could be distinguished between the criteria of legitimacy, which is the criteria to judge the legitimacy of a particular decision-making procedure, and the guideline of institutions, which is a guideline to make the consequences of deliberation better. This distinction is necessary to enhance the cooperation between normative and empirical studies.

This article examines the development of representative government in modern Japan, focusing on Mutsu Munemitsu’s view of politics. Soon after the establishment of the Imperial Diet in 1890, Meiji leaders came to be faced with the problem of how to manage politics which was inevitably linked to the parliament and political parties. Mutsu’s idea was to cope with the situation through the way of British parliamentary government. During the period of the first Matsukata cabinet, Itō Hirobumi attempted to establish a new political party which supported the national unity. The view on politics and political parties of Mutsu, who had a view that struggle and competition between parties brought the progress of politics and society, was different from Itō. However, Mutsu strongly supported Itō’s plan and created an image that Itō and Mutsu were in the same camp. In the next, the second Itō cabinet, Mutsu brought the Liberal Party over to the camp, and it virtually became the government party of the Itō cabinet, while the Progressive Party was the opposition party. Yet, the development of representative government in this way, the basis of which was plurality, opposition, and competition, ceased with Mutsu’s death in 1897.

This article re-examines the relationship in 1940’s between the Military Affairs Bureau in the Army Ministry and the private think tank Kokusaku Kenkyukai, both of which engaged in designing Shin-taisei Shian Yoko (a concept paper outlining the new socio-political structure Shin-taisei) and illustrates the real ideas of Shin-taisei conceived by some leading bureaucrats in the Army Ministry. Since Kokusaku Kenkyukai has long been regarded as a brain trust for the Army, Shin-taisei Shian Yoko has been assumed to reflect the Army’s concept for Shin-taisei. However, a close look at the process of developing Shin-taisei Shian Yoko reveals it involved a variety of members, some of whom politically distanced from the Army, and their open debates reflected their respects for parliamentary and party politics. Although these findings may seem to contradict the assumption mentioned above, the author argues the assumption remains reasonable to a certain extent, for that a severe political predicament those bureaucrats were in led them to value moderate impressions associated with Kokusaku Kenkyukai such as neutrality and openness, and perceive the necessity of parliamentary and party politics.

This study examines how electoral systems shape politician’s reelection strategy. Although a number of previous studies find the impact of district magnitude on politicians’ constituent service and roll-call votes, little empirical evidence for this is provided. This current study argues that higher district magnitude drives politicians to promote distributive policies to gain support from narrowly targeted constituents, because the vote-share threshold that they need to win a seat decreases as district magnitude increases. The study measures policy areas in which politicians are interested by the type of assembly committees to which they belong. An empirical evidence shows that politicians elected from higher district magnitude are more likely to belong to the committees concerned with distributive policies such as construction and public companies, while politicians elected from lower district magnitude are more likely to belong to committees concerned with general policies such as general affairs and public finance.

Mastery of core Confucian texts was not a prerequisite for the advancement in one’s career in Tokugawa Japan, which did not adopt imperial examination as practiced in China. This also holds true for Kawaji Toshiakira, who enjoyed swift promotion due to his practical niftiness at the treasury. However, he was also a truly learned man.

His vast knowledge was a fruit of his readings and correspondence with numerous scholars of Chinese and Dutch studies. What, then, was the meaning of scholarly endeavor for a samurai bureaucrat like Kawaji? This paper examines how Kawaji justified and further refined his efficiency-based, results-oriented approach to the world as a bureaucrat through his readings of Confucian texts and works of their interpreters, such as Ogyū Sorai and Rai Sanyō. For Kawaji, the goal was to become a responsible samurai, rather than an idealized sage.

Nobusuke Kishi, an important figure in postwar Japanese politics, could be expected to bridge prewar and postwar politics from his experience in prewar Manchuria and serving in Prime Minister Tojo’s cabinet. However, he was consequently mythicized as someone influential from before the war. This paper will attempt to show Kishi as a normal bureaucrat by dealing with Kishi’s limits and failures as a Commerce and Industry official and investigating the 1940 reshuffling of Kishi, Vice Minister of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, often portrayed as due to a disagreement with Minister Ichizo Kobayashi over free/controlled markets. The political economic structure of “after party politics” is explained by repositioning it within the changing relationship of the political and business worlds and the stable wartime political order and equilibrium. Therefore, the process of this analysis reflects Kishi being thwarted by period structural changes, and should be useful for examining his image from a postwar perspective.