UW News

August 19, 2002

UW conferees seek to shape epochal reform of Japan’s legal system

With world attention focused on corporate lawbreaking and economic turmoil, Japan is trying to solve its problems by adding tens of thousands of new lawyers.

The vast legal reform now under way in Japan will be debated by some of its top designers and critics Aug. 23 and 24 at the University of Washington School of Law, sponsor of an international conference on “Law in Japan: A Turning Point.”

The overhaul — the first of its kind under Japan’s postwar constitution — calls for doubling the number of new lawyers, launching U.S.-style graduate law schools and introducing something akin to jury trials.

Coming to Seattle to debate the outlines of this massive experiment will be Prosecutor General Akio Harada — Japan’s counterpart to the U.S. attorney general — and 40 of the world’s leading authorities on Japanese law from the University of Tokyo, Kyoto University, the University of Washington, Harvard, Columbia, New York University and other prestigious schools and law firms.

“These are the experts’ experts,” said Veronica Taylor, director of the UW’s Asian Law Center.

The two-day event will in some ways echo a path-breaking conference held at Harvard in 1961 that surveyed the new postwar legal system in Japan. The UW conference, Taylor said, comes at an equally dramatic turning point for Japan.

“In 1961 participants were probably thinking, ‘Look at this quaint legal system that needs modernization,'” Taylor said. “Now, after 40 years of intense legal collaboration, we can expect much more of a conversation about the relative strengths and weaknesses of both U.S. and Japanese legal regulation.”

Japan is looking to its judiciary, prosecutors and attorneys to play a greater role in helping people solve the legal conflicts that arise during a recession and when significant parts of the economy are deregulated. At the same time, Taylor said, scholars in America are learning from Japanese legal solutions in areas such as bankruptcy, dispute resolution and civil procedure that may present alternatives to U.S. legal practice.

The UW School of Law has been a center for Japanese law studies since the 1930s, when it was selected (along with Harvard) by the Japanese government to receive an extensive collection of legal materials. Today, the 24,000 volumes on Japanese law comprise the core of a 38,000 volume Asian law collection that is considered second in scope and quality only to the Asian law collection at the Library of Congress.

The UW Asian Law Center gained international recognition in the 1960s as the most comprehensive, Taylor said. Its alumni in Asia include prominent lawyers, judges, politicians and businesspeople. Students in Seattle and Tokyo now routinely collaborate, via videoconferencing and the Internet, in courses such as International Contracting.

Former UW Law Professor Daniel Foote in 1999 became the first American lawyer to be tenured at the University of Tokyo Faculty of Law, and will convene this week’s conference.

Japanese law continues to be a core strength of the Asian Law Center, Taylor said, in part because Japan is an important legal model for other countries in which the center works, such as China, Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand.

Outside of Washington’s Puget Sound region, Japan is home to the largest concentration of UW law graduates — more than 500. And the school is currently working with colleagues in Japan to assist with the transition of Japanese legal education to a graduate model, said School of Law Dean Joe Knight.

“Our strong connection to Japan,” Knight said, “is both historical and evolving. The intellectual exchange and work that will take place during the conference are prime examples of what makes this law school unique in the country.”

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For more information or to cover the conference, contact Taylor at (206) 543-5643 or vtaylor@u.washington.edu. The conference program is available at http://www.law.washington.edu/AsianLaw/japanlaw/conference/