The Culture of Legal Change: A Case Study of Tobacco Control in Twenty-First Century Japan

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\u27s 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 incentives, it concentrates on a less easily measured factor- cultural incentives -and highlights its impact on the agents and outcomes of change. By identifying international norms as the inspiration for domestic legal change and local culture as a mediating influence that transforms international norms into domestic law, the Article seeks to contribute to the growing scholarly interest in the interaction of culture and law. It shows legal change to be a culturally contingent process dependent upon the interaction of the local and the global, rational actions and cultural dispositions

Layers of Law: The Case of E-Cigarettes

This paper, written for a symposium on Layers of Law and Social Order, connects the current debate over the regulation of electronic cigarettes with socio-legal scholarship on law, norms, and social control. Although almost every aspect of modern life that is subject to regulation can be seen through the framework ‘layers of law,’ e-cigarettes are distinguished by the rapid emergence of an unusually dense legal and regulatory web. In part, the dense fabric of e-cigarette law and regulation, both within and beyond the US, results from the lack of robust scientific and epidemiological data on the behavioral and health consequences of e-cigarettes, without which regulators can justify a wide range of legal interventions. In the absence of compelling science that supports particular types of policies, regulators in different jurisdictions can, with equal justification, pursue either permissive or prohibitionary regulations. The result is a broad spectrum of policy interventions, a number of which are discussed in the paper

Shots for Tots?

By endorsing the use of a vaccine that makes the experience of puffing on a cigarette deeply distasteful, Lieber and Millum have taken the first few tentative steps into a future filled with medical interventions that manipulate individual preferences. It is tempting to embrace the careful arguments of “Preventing Sin” and celebrate the possibility that the profound individual and social costs of smoking will finally be tamed. Yet there is something unsettling about the possibility that parental discretion may be on the cusp of a radical expansion, one that involves a new and unexplored approach to behavior modification

Compensating the Victims of Japan’s 3-11 Fukushima Disaster

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 optimism—billions of dollars have been spent compensating millions of individuals and businesses, in most cases through extra-judicial channels that have minimized the need for protracted, expensive litigation. But this article also reveals a compensation structure that excludes large numbers of potential claims by privileging the losses of nuclear accident victims over those of earthquake and tsunami victims; describes a system in which those potentially eligible for compensation must navigate an overly complex institutional matrix for pursuing their claims; and discusses an increasing amount of litigation by individuals and groups within and beyond Japan that has clouded the compensation landscape. In short, post-Fukushima compensation is both laudable and lamentable, relying upon arbitrary distinctions between deserving and undeserving victims and leaving many victims unpaid and discontent, but also succeeding in managing a large number of claims

Shots for Tots?

By endorsing the use of a vaccine that makes the experience of puffing on a cigarette deeply distasteful, Lieber and Millum have taken the first few tentative steps into a future filled with medical interventions that manipulate individual preferences. It is tempting to embrace the careful arguments of “Preventing Sin” and celebrate the possibility that the profound individual and social costs of smoking will finally be tamed. Yet there is something unsettling about the possibility that parental discretion may be on the cusp of a radical expansion, one that involves a new and unexplored approach to behavior modification

Fukushima: Catastrophe, Compensation, and Justice in Japan

Well before the Fukushima disaster of March 11, 2011, governments in the developed world struggled with victim compensation in cases of environmental contamination, harms caused by pharmaceutical products, terrorist attacks, and more. All of those are important precedents to Fukushima, but none of them approach the breadth of harms resulting from the triple disaster of huge earthquake, massive tsunami, and nuclear meltdown now known in Japan as 3/11. With close to 20,000 people dead or missing, one million homes fully destroyed or seriously damaged, and 100,000 people displaced, getting those whose lives were affected by the events in Fukushima back on their feet is a daunting task. How should Japanese society, and the Japanese state, respond? How much compensation, if any, should be offered to the victims? What types of losses should be considered compensable? Which institutions are best equipped to evaluate and manage a system of redress

Law, Society, and Medical Malpractice Litigation in Japan

This Essay examines conflict over medical malpractice claims in Japan, and uses it as a lens through which to view the relationship between tort law and its social, economic, and political context