Comparative and Foreign Law Commons^™

Retention And Reform In Japanese Capital Punishment, David T. Johnson

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Article focuses on the failure of abolition and of death penalty reform in Japan in order to illustrate contingencies in the trajectory of capital punishment in the modern world. Part I describes three facts about postwar Japan that help explain why it retains capital punishment today: a missed opportunity for abolition during the American occupation of the country after World War II; the long-term rule of a conservative political party; and economic and geopolitical power that has enabled the country to resist the influence of international norms. Part II describes a few ways in which Japanese capital punishment has …

Why Foreign Policy Principles Persist: Understanding The Reinterpretations Of Japan’S Article 9 And Switzerland’S Neutrality, Yuki Numata

Pomona Senior Theses

This study examines why Japan and Switzerland have chosen to keep the vocabulary of Article 9 and neutrality, respectively, and to reinterpret their definitions to suit their needs (policy reinterpretation), instead of simply abandoning the original policy and replacing it with a new, more suitably worded policy that clarifies the changing policy position of the government (policy abandonment). By analyzing the legal history of the overseas capabilities of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces and the Swiss Armed Forces, as well as the actions and influences of the government, political parties, and the public, this study finds the following trends. First, the …

Regulating To Achieve Stability In The Domain Of High-Frequency Trading, Lindsey C. Crump

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

High-frequency trading has become a darling of capital markets debate. This debate thrives because the true and long-lasting effects of high-frequency trading are still unknown. On one hand, high-frequency trading evidences recent and powerful advances in trading technology; on the other, it is said to harness speed at the expense of fairness, prudence, and stability. In part because of this duality, the regulation of high-frequency trading in the United States has been slow to develop. Other nations, however, have been quicker to react and to promulgate laws that directly, or indirectly, affect high-frequency trading. This Note explores the legal responses …

Prime Time For Japan To Take Another Step Forward In Lay Participation: Exploring Expansion To Civil Trials, Matthew J. Wilson

Akron Law Review

With Japan marking its three-year anniversary of the lay judge system, now is an ideal time to assess the progress of the new system, examine its effect on Japanese society, and explore future possibilities. More significantly, this paper asserts that the convergence of various forces makes this an ideal time to expand lay participation into the civil realm so as to enhance the justice process and fully achieve the objectives of Japan’s major legal reforms. Accordingly, this paper is separated into three sections. First, Part I details the underpinnings of Japan’s new lay judge system and examines its triumphs and …

Product Liability Law In Japan: An Introduction To A Developing Area Of Law, Younghee Jin Ottley, Bruce L. Ottley

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Land-Value Taxation As A Method Of Encouraging Growth In Baltimore, Michael Safko

University of Baltimore Journal of Land and Development

The events that occurred last May have left many residents of Baltimore wondering what can be done to rebuild their city better than it was before.1 One particular suggestion is the elimination of all current property taxes along with the implementation of a land-value tax (LVT).2 An LVT would tax property owners based on the unimproved land they own, rather than on the improvements and structures that have been built on the land.3 The argument follows that this method of taxation would incentivize property owners to develop their land, rather than leave it undeveloped so they can pay less in …

More Than Bric-A-Brac: Testing Chinese Exceptionalism In Patenting Behavior Using Comparative Empirical Analysis, Jay P. Kesan, Alan Marco, Richard Miller

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Although many developing economies are increasingly influencing the global economy, China’s influence has been the greatest of these by far. Once hindered from competition by political and economic restrictions, China is now a major economic player. As China’s economic might has grown, so too has the demand for intellectual property protection for technologies originating from China. In this article, we present a detailed empirical study of Chinese patenting trends in the United States and the implications of these trends for the global economy. We compare these trends to patenting trends from earlier decades. Specifically, we compare Chinese patenting trends to …

International Trade In Services From The Japanese Viewpoint, Masato Dogauchi

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Confessions And The Right To Silence In Japan, Daniel H. Foote

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Japanese Fair Trade Commission Guidelines For Licensing Agreements: An Overview And A Critique, Bradley J. Nicholson

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Seventh Circuit Allows American Subsidiary To Avoid Title Vii Liability By Asserting Fcn Treaty Rights Of Japanese Parent - American Employees Treated As Second Class Citizens - Court Cites Reciprocal Benefits For American Firms Operating Abroad - Fortino V. Quasar Co., 950 F.2d 389 (7th Cir. 1991)., Steven J. Lewengrub

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Hammering Down Nails, Scott M. Lenhart

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

The Impact Of The 'Technology Transfer Surplus' On The Trade Deficit With Japan And Its Cures, M. Brendan Chatham

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Ceo & Employee Pay Discrepancy: How The Government's Policies Have Encouraged The Gap, David R. Meals

The Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship & the Law

This paper examines the role of the U.S. Government in the CEO versus worker pay gap, both in contributing to its creation and the ability to reverse it. To better understand this issue, this paper includes a survey of current U.S. and foreign CEO compensation practices, a survey of theories proposed to explain the divergence between U.S. and foreign CEO compensation, a review of the social and business impact of excessive CEO compensation, and identifies socioeconomic theories regarding the excessive CEO pay trend. This is followed by a review of the history of attempted solutions along with newly enacted and …

On The Ninth Circuit's New Definition Of Piracy: Japanese Whalers V. The Sea Shepherd-Who Are The Real "Pirates" (I.E. Plunderers)?, Barry H. Dubner, Claudia Pastorius

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Legally "Strong" Shareholders Of Japan, Gen Goto

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

Foreign investors often criticize Japanese corporations for not paying enough attention to the interests of their shareholders. It might surprise these critics, then, to learn that shareholders’ legal rights under the Japanese Companies Act are actually quite strong. Indeed, many of the rights that shareholders’ rights advocates often support, including shareholders’ power to alter a corporate charter without board consent, shareholders’ power to control dividend payments, majority voting for board elections, shareholders’ power to replace the board of directors, and shareholder access to a corporate ballot—all of which are strongly debated elsewhere— are already effective in Japan. Moreover, derivative suits …

Equality In Asia, Kate O'Regan, Madhav Khosla

Faculty Scholarship

If the right to equality promises more than it can ever deliver, it is also a right whose text and application reflects the history of the society in which it applies. The right to equality is thus particularly challenging for comparative law. Although it is found in nearly every modern democratic constitution, the formulation, interpretation and application of the right varies markedly and it accordingly presents acutely difficult questions for a study such as this. The difficulties not only arise from the differences in historical, socio-economic and political context, but also from differing conceptions of equality itself. In this brief …

Maneuvering Modernity: Family Law As A Battle Field In Colonial Taiwan (1895-1945), Yun-Ru Chen

2013 New England Association for Asian Studies Conference

Twenty five years after launching its own legal modernization in response to Western imperialism, Japan imposed a modern legal system upon its first colony, Taiwan. In accordance with the “respecting old custom” colonial policy, the Japanese created a system called Taiwanese customary law, a mixture of imperial Chinese laws, local customs and European legal concepts, and gradually implemented its newly adopted European-style Meiji Civil Code (1898). However, even since the late 1910s when the colonial policy changed into “full-flag assimilation,” family law remained an exception to the transplantation of Japanese laws. That did not, however, mean that family law was …

Japan As A Postmodern Legal Reality, Rosemary L. Harding, Antonios E. Platsas

University of Miami International and Comparative Law Review

No abstract provided.

Constitutionalism: East Asian Antecedents, Tom Ginsburg

Chicago-Kent Law Review

To what degree can traditional Asian political and legal institutions be seen as embodying constitutionalist values? This question has risen to the fore in recent decades as part of a new attention to constitutionalism around the world, as well as the decline in orientalist perceptions of Asia as a region of oppressive legal traditions. This article juxtaposes East Asian analogues or antecedents of constitutionalism with a particular set of recent theoretical understandings of the concept of constitutionalism. After conducting a historical review of political and legal institutions in China, Japan and Korea, the article argues that we can indeed speak …

Citizenship And Marriage In A Globalizing World: Multicultural Families And Monocultural Nationality Laws In Korea And Japan, Erin Aeran Chung, Daisy Kim

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This Article analyzes how individual and local attempts to address low fertility rates in Korea and Japan have prompted unprecedented reforms in monocultural nationality laws. Korea and Japan confront rapidly declining working-age population projections; yet, they have prohibited the immigration of unskilled workers, until recently in Korea's case, on the claim that their admission would threaten social cohesion. Over the past two decades, both countries have made only incremental reforms to their immigration policies that fall short of alleviating labor shortages and the fiscal burdens of maintaining a large elderly population. Instead, prompted by the growth of so-called multicultural families …

Prosecutors And Bargaining In Weak Cases: A Comparative View, Jenia I. Turner

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

One of the most controversial uses of prosecutorial discretion in plea bargaining concerns cases involving weak evidence of guilt. When a prosecutor bargains about the charges or even the facts in a case with weak evidence, at least three problems may arise. First, if the charge bargain is generous, it may coerce an innocent defendant to plead guilty. Second, such a bargain may let a guilty defendant off too easily, thus disserving the public and victim’s interests. Third, if the parties bargain about the facts, the result may distort the truth of the case.

In this book chapter, I examine …

The Law Of Medical Misadventure In Japan, Robert B. Leflar

Chicago-Kent Law Review

This paper offers a comprehensive overview of Japanese law and practice relating to iatrogenic (medically-caused) injury, with comparisons to other nations' medical law systems. The paper addresses criminal sanctions for Japanese physicians' negligent and illegal acts; civil law principles of substantive law and related issues of procedure, practice, and liability insurance; and administrative measures including health ministry programs aimed at expanding and improving the quality of peer review within Japanese medicine, and a recently implemented no-fault compensation system for birth-related injuries.

Among the paper's findings are these. Criminal and civil actions increased rapidly after highly publicized medical error events at …

Japan's Quasi-Jury And Grand Jury Systems As Deliberative Agents Of Social Change: De-Colonial Strategies And Deliberative Participatory Democracy, Hiroshi Fukurai

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Direct participatory democracy touches Japan anew in its current attempt to reform and reconstruct the criminal justice system through the introduction of two tiered systems of quasi-jury (saiban-in) and grand jury (kensatsu shinsakai) institutions. Not only did the twin systems of lay deliberation help create an effective and investigative mechanism against the corporate predation and governmental abuse of power, they also allowed the prosecution of military crimes committed by U.S. Armed Forces personnel and their families stationed in Japan. My paper then examines the historical evolution of these newly established lay justice institutions, exploring the increasing adoption of lay forms …

Insular Minorities: International Law’S Challenge To Japan’S Ethnic Homogeneity, Timothy Webster

Faculty Publications

The Japanese state has long promoted a view of itself, and the country, as ethnically homogeneous. Borrowing on critical race theory as developed in the United States, this paper first traces the numerous laws and policies that Japan has implemented to privilege ethnically Japanese people, and prejudice ethnic others. Next, the paper examines the role of international human rights law in challenging various edifices of the ethno-state, including amendments to legislation, and individual lawsuits. I conclude that international law has played a meaningful role in diversifying the protective ambit of Japanese law, but cannot provide all of the solutions that …

What Directors Do (And Fail To Do): Some Comparative Notes On Board Structure And Corporate Governance, Simon Deakin

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Japan's New Lay Judge System: Deliberative Democracy In Action?, Zachary Corey, Valerie P. Hans

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Pride, Prejudice, And Japan's Unified State, Suzanne M. Sable

University of the District of Columbia Law Review

Japan is undoubtedly one of the foremost economic powers in the world and is internationally recognized as a democratic leader among modern nations. The economy's rapid growth in the mid-twentieth century has been attributed to its booming technical industries, including its electronic and automobile industries. However, Japan is unique in that it has retained traditions associated with typically less advanced nations-namely, a regressive human rights agenda. Although cultural, ethnic, and social minorities continue to exist on Japanese soil today, Japan's social policy of Nihonjinron allows the majority of the population to disregard such minorities and perpetuate the government's vision of …

The Anti-Network: Private Global Governance, Legal Knowledge, And The Legitimacy Of The State, Annelise Riles

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Global private law has become the source of both anxiety and euphoria. Inherent in this fascination is the assumption that global private law threatens the legitimacy of the state by taking over its functions through new techniques of governance. In this article, I build upon research in one arena of global private governance, the production of legal documentation for the global swap markets, to challenge the most prominent assumptions about private law beyond the state. I argue that rather than focusing on how global private law is or is not an artifact of state power, a body of private norms, …

The Proliferation Of Global Reits And The Cross-Borderization Of The Asian Market, Julius L. Sokol

San Diego International Law Journal

After a brief discussion on the history of REITs, this Article goes on to analyze their importance and role within the global and Asian economy. Next, the underlying motivations for legal amendments to the REIT structures are discussed, as well as the socio-economic benefits associated with coordinating liberal REIT legislation throughout Asia. Subsequently, this article analyzes the various regulatory aspects of the regimes in Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, Thailand and Malaysia. In exploring their shortcomings, comparisons are made to the highly successful United States REIT structure. Given the history of our nation's regime, it goes without saying that …