Digital Commons Network^™

Secured Transactions Law Reform In Japan: Japan Business Credit Project Assessment Of Interviews And Tentative Policy Proposals, Megumi Hara, Kumiko Koens, Charles W. Mooney Jr.

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This article summarizes key findings from the Japan Business Credit Project (JBCP), which involved more than 30 semi-structured interviews conducted in Japan from 2016 through 2018. It was inspired by important and previously unexplored questions concerning secured financing of movables (business equipment and inventory) and claims (receivables)—“asset-based lending” or “ABL.” Why is the use of ABL in Japan so limited? What are the principal obstacles and disincentives to the use of ABL in Japan? The interviews were primarily with staff of banks, but also included those of government officials and regulators, academics, and law practitioners. The article proposes reforms of …

Regulating E-Cigarettes: Why Policies Diverge, Eric A. Feldman

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This paper, part of a festschrift in honor of Professor Malcolm Feeley, explores the landscape of e-cigarette policy globally by looking at three jurisdictions that have taken starkly different approaches to regulating e-cigarettes—the US, Japan, and China. Each of those countries has a robust tobacco industry, government agencies entrusted with protecting public health, an active and sophisticated scientific and medical community, and a regulatory structure for managing new pharmaceutical, tobacco, and consumer products. All three are signatories of the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, all are signatories of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, …

Insolvency Law As Credit Enhancement And Enforcement Mechanism: A Closer Look At Global Modernization Of Secured Transactions Law, Charles W. Mooney Jr.

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This essay revisits earlier work on the relationship between insolvency law and secured credit, the role of secured transactions law reforms, and the benefits of secured credit. These complex relationships require a holistic approach toward reforms of secured transactions law and insolvency law. Merely enacting sensible secured transactions laws and insolvency laws may be insufficient to produce the intended benefits from either set of laws.

The essay is informed by an ongoing qualitative empirical study of business credit in Japan—the Japanese Business Credit Project. The JBCP involves interviews of representatives of Japanese financial institutions and governmental bodies and legal practitioners …

Law, Society, And Setsuo: Miyazawa’S Influence On Socio-Legal Studies, Eric A. Feldman

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What Setsuo has accomplished over these past 30 years is nothing short of remarkable. I can think of no other scholar within or outside of Japan who has had a greater impact on both the legal academic community and society more generally. Indeed, when Setsuo was still quite young he had already written a number of influential articles. But they turn out to represent only a fraction of his extraordinary output over the next years. In reflecting on Setsuo’s many achievements, I am particularly drawn to comment on three of them. First, his empirical and comparative law and society scholarship, …

Governing Disasters: The Challenge Of Global Disaster Law And Policy, Eric A. Feldman, Chelsea Fish

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This chapter uses the analytical framework of transnational legal ordering (TLO) developed by Halliday and Shaffer and applies it to the area of law and disasters. In contrast to the increasingly transnational legal nature of social ordering highlighted by Halliday and Shaffer, it argues that the emergence of transnational regulatory networks and cross-border principles or policies in the area of disaster management has been uneven and incomplete. Although there are many factors that help to explain why the law/disasters area has resisted the trend toward “transnationalization,” two stand out. One is the relative dearth of national laws and policies governing …

Compensating The Victims Of Japan’S 3-11 Fukushima Disaster, Eric A. Feldman

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Japan’s March 2011 triple disaster—first a large earthquake, followed by a massive tsunami and a nuclear meltdown—caused a devastating loss of life, damaged and destroyed property, and left hundreds of thousands of people homeless, hurt, and in need. This article looks at the effort to address the financial needs of the victims of the 3/11 disaster by examining the role of public and private actors in providing compensation, describing the types of groups and individuals for whom compensation is available, and analyzing the range of institutions through which compensation has been allocated. The story is in some ways cause for …

The Ethical And Legal Basis For Student Practice In Clinical Education In The United States And Japan: A Comparative Analysis, Robert Rubinson

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Clinical legal education is currently undergoing a surge of interest and development in Japan. This raises numerous opportunities as well as difficulties. One of the most vexing issues concerns the scope of work a clinic student in Japan can do. This issue is particularly difficult given that in Japan there are currently no "student practice rules" so common in the United States.

The norms and rules governing what activities law students can perform in the United States might assist those interested in clinical education in Japan as they work through these issues. This article will attempt to do this. I …

Law, Culture, And Conflict: Dispute Resolution In Postwar Japan, Eric Feldman

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The 1963 publication of Takeyoshi Kawashima’s “Dispute Resolution in Contemporary Japan” has indelibly influenced the study of law and conflict in postwar Japan. A mere nineteen text pages of Arthur Taylor von Mehren’s seven hundred–page volume, Law in Japan: The Legal Order in a Changing Society, Kawashima’s observations about the infrequency of litigation in Japan, and his emphasis on the sociocultural context of conflict, continue to resonate. As a noted scholar of Japanese law has succinctly written, “Virtually every scholarly work [about Japanese law] in the last thirty-five years has been framed in some way or another by the conceptual …

Legal Reform In Contemporary Japan, Eric Feldman

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In this chapter I offer a preliminary assessment of a quickly moving target—legal reform and its impact on rights in Japan. Although a broad consensus has emerged among interested parties that at least some degree of reform is desirable, there is significant disagreement about the goals of reform, and also about the likelihood that it will achieve certain objectives. Some commentators believe that the Japanese legal system is on the cusp of a “revolution” that will shore up long-neglected rights and create new entitlements. Others predict that the consequences of reform will be modest; and they despair that aggrieved individuals …

The Culture Of Legal Change: A Case Study Of Tobacco Control In Twenty-First Century Japan, Eric Feldman

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This Article argues that the interaction of international norms and local culture is a central factor in the creation and transformation of legal rules. Like Alan Watson's influential theory of legal transplants, it emphasizes that legal change is frequently a consequence of learning from other jurisdictions. And like those who have argued that rational, self-interested lawmakers responding to incentives such as reelection are the engine of legal change, this Article treats incentives as critical motivators of human behavior. But in place of the cutting-and-pasting of black-letter legal doctrine it highlights the cross-border flow of social norms, and rather than material …

The Tuna Court: Law And Norms In The World's Premier Fish Market, Eric Feldman

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Legal scholars have long emphasized the corrosive impact of conflict on long-term commercial and interpersonal relationships. To minimize the negative consequences of such conflict, members of close-knit groups who anticipate future interactions create ways of resolving their disputes with reference to internal group norms rather than relying on state-mandated legal rules. From farmers in California’s Shasta County to jewelers in midtown Manhattan and neighbors in Sanders County, the literature describes people who create norms of conflict management that are faster and less expensive than relying on formal law, and lessen the harm that conflict causes to their relationships. This article …

Are Your Click-Wrap Agreements Valid?—Internet Contracting In The Global Electronic Age: Comparative Perspectives For Taiwan, James Maxeiner

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Addresses the issue of standard terms in click-wrap and shrink-wrap licenses generally and in some detail how the laws of Taiwan, Germany, the European Union, the United States and Japan.

The Professional In Legal Education: Foreign Perspectives, James Maxeiner

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Japan is about to change its system of legal education. In April 2004 Japan will introduce law schools. Law schools are to occupy an intermediary place between the present undergraduate faculties of law and the national Legal Training and Research Institute. The law faculties are to continue to offer general undergraduate education in law, while the law schools in combination with the national Institute are to provide professional legal education. A principal goal of the change is to produce more lawyers. Law schools are charged with providing "practical education especially for fostering legal professionals." But just what is professional legal …

More Lessons From Japan: End Industrywide Collective Bargaining?, Robert H. Lande, Richard O. Zerbe Jr.

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The number of books and articles discussing Japanese management techniques with an eye to transplanting them to the United States is staggering. Americans understandably are impressed by Japanese efficiency and like to think the adoption of some of their techniques will aid our own industries. Often these proposals seem fanciful and fail to recognize the many differences between the two countries, their economic systems and cultures.