Judges Commons^™

The Supreme Court And The Push For Transparency In Lower Court Appointments In Japan, Daniel H. Foote

Articles

The theme of this symposium issue is ―Decision Making on the Japanese Supreme Court.‖ From that title, readers understandably might assume the focus is squarely on decisions in judicial cases. Yet, as Lawrence Repeta observes in his Article for this issue, the Japanese Supreme Court bears responsibility for another major category of decision making: judicial administration.1 One vitally important aspect of judicial administration for which the Supreme Court bears primary responsibility is the selection of lower court judges, together with personnel management of judges (including decisions on promotions and transfers, which are a standard element of Japan’s career judiciary).2 The …

Policymaking By The Japanese Judiciary In The Criminal Justice Field, Daniel H. Foote

Articles

When one speaks of policymaking by the judiciary, the image that often comes to tnind is the U.S. judiciary, especially the Supreme Court of the United States. That reaction is understandable. Examples abound of policymaking by courts in the United States; and a seemingly never-ending stream of books and articles discuss, analyze, and, depending on the authors'point of view, praise or decry "policymaking" or "judicial activism" by U.S. courts. The field of criminal justice frequently is offered as a prominent example of judicial policymaking in the United States. Expansion in due process protections and other rights for criminal suspects and …

Restrictions On Political Activity By Judges In Japan And The United States: The Cases Of Judge Teranishi And Justice Sanders, Daniel H. Foote

Articles

In the late 1990s, similar dramas relating to political activity by judges were playing out on opposite sides of the Pacific Ocean. The cases involved a Japanese decision concerning an assistant judge of the Sendai District Court, Teranishi Kazushi, and an American decision relating to a newly sworn-in justice of the Supreme Court of the State of Washington, Richard Sanders. Both attended gatherings with distinctly political agendas. Both made brief remarks implying, but never directly stating, their support for the agendas presented. Both were censured for having engaged in impermissible political activity. Both appealed those censures, ultimately as far as …

Are Criminal Defendants In Japan Truly Receiving Trials By Judges, Daniel H. Foote

Articles

Since my initial appointment as an assistant judge in April of 1950, I have served as a judge for over 39 1/2 years. For most of that time, over 30 years, I have handled criminal trials. Thus, one might say that I personally represent a living history of the current Code of Criminal Procedure. Human beings, however, inevitably tend to idle their time away; and I have been kept busy day in and day out handling cases and up until now have never had the chance to sit back and reflect dispassionately on the actual state of criminal trials. That …

Resolution Of Traffic Accident Disputes And Judicial Activism In Japan, Daniel H. Foote

Articles

The topic of resolution of traffic accident cases in Japan has already seen two works in English: a 1989 article by J. Mark Ramseyer and Minoru Nakazato in the Journal of Legal Studies and a 1990 article by Takao Tanase in the Law and Society Review. Why yet another article?

First, despite the fine treatment of a wide range of issues in those articles, neither of those works gave much attention to what I regard as one of the most interesting and important aspects of the Japanese treatment of automobile accident cases: namely, the role of the judiciary and the …