Bulletin n. 3/2011 | ||
February 2012 | ||
L. Nottage; S. Green |
||
Who Defends Japan?: Government Lawyers and Judicial System Reform in Japan | ||
in Asia-Pacific Law and Policy Journal , Volume 13, Issue 1 , 2011 , 129-173 | ||
The June 2001 Final Recommendations to the Japanese Prime Minister from the Justice System Reform Council (“JSRC”) (shihōkaikaku iinkai) aimed to bring the legal system closer to the people. One aspect involved expanding opportunities for participation in the judicial process on the part of laypersons, experts in non-legal fields, and legal professionals other than the elite career judges, lawyers (bengoshi) and public prosecutors who qualified as such after passing the extremely difficult National Legal Examination (shihōshiken).1 This was thought to offer both enhanced efficiencies (especially for layperson involvement – greater democratic legitimacy) – a related goal thought to offer even greater efficiencies, tied in to a broader program of economic deregulation that accelerated over Japan‟s “lost decade” of economic stagnation during the 1990s. | ||