Comment on Using Criminal Punishment to Serve Both Victim and Social Needs

Haley comments on the argument underlying the article by Erin Ann O\u27Hara and Maria Mayo Robbins, which emphasizes on victim-offender mediation (VOM). By expanding the frame of reference, restorative justice can be defined as a paradigm whose scope encompasses more than VOM and whose emphasis includes the needs of society and offenders as well as victims. Restorative justice involves a wide variety of processes and programs that are more apt to restore both those who commit and those who suffer wrongs. It includes children at risk programs, drug courts, violence-treatment programs, as well as VOM programs. It also includes efforts to assist former convicts returning to the community to engage in constructive lifestyles and sustainable roles in families, workplaces, and neighborhoods

The Role of Courts in Making Law in Japan: The Communitarian Conservatism of Japanese Judges

Professor Haley is an outstanding international and comparative law scholar, widely credited with having popularized Japanese legal studies in the United States. In 1969, Haley received a fellowship from the University of Washington and was in one of the first classes to graduate from the Asian Law Program, now, the Asian Law Center. After working for several years in law firms in Japan, he joined the law faculty at the University of Washington, where he remained for nearly twenty-six years during which time he directed the Asian and Comparative Law Program. In June 2012, Professor Haley was awarded The Order of the Rising Sun (3rd Class) from the Emperor of Japan for his contribution to the discipline of Japanese law and education to Japanese legal professionals and academics. In honor of this achievement, the University of Washington School of Law and the Asian Law Center brought together distinguished scholars and Asian Law Center alumni to discuss the judiciary’s increased role in Japan and Asia in two conferences. The following is Professor Haley’s address at the University of Waseda, Japan, on October 22nd, 2012. In this speech, Professor Haley provides an overview of the role of legal precedent in Japan, both throughout its history and today

Rethinking Contract Practice and Law in Japan

This article explores the Japanese advantage in the enforcement of ex ante contract commitments in comparison with the United States, arguing that ostensible convergence of Japanese and United States contract practice in on-going business relationships is based on very different assumptions and conditions. Writing in the early 1960s Takeyoshi KaWashima in Japan and Stewart Macaulay in the United States described prevailing views and practices related to business agreements. Their respective observations indicated a tendency in both countries to avoid formal, legally enforceable contacts. For over four decades scholars on both sides of the Pacific have tended view these observations as grounds for arguing for a convergence of contract practice. Recent research efforts have attempted to verify empirically such convergence. On closer examination, however, the conclusions reached by Kawashima and Macaulay rest on very different assumptions

Waging War: Japan\u27s Constitutional Constraints

Both electoral results and public opinion polls have long revealed what most observers have viewed as a paradox if not a contradiction. By significant majorities, the Japanese people appear to oppose any revision of article 9, but support the SDF and their deployment with legislative sanction. The seemingly antithetical aspects of these views can be reconciled if one accepts the proposition that the public is willing to allow an armed force but only within parameters that are still ill-defined. So long as article 9 remains, the government is constrained by the need for legislative approval and at least potential judicial objection. Thus, by gradual evolution, a consensus seems to have emerged allowing the maintenance of armed forces, but limiting their use to noncombat roles that also have explicit legislative approval

Law and Culture in China and Japan: A Framework for Analysis

This Comment is divided into two parts. The first sets forth a series of definitional propositions intended for a more general analysis of the interrelationships of law and culture. The second comprises an introduction to the evolution of legal institutions that enables us to understand better the reception and development of Western legal institutions in East Asia and provides context for the four articles and their individual and collective insights

Constitutional Adjudication in Japan: Context, Structures, and Values

Judges in Japan share the prevailing communitarian orientation of their society, an orientation that rejects Manichean choices and moral or scientific absolutes, but instead relies on their collective and individual perceptions of community values, including the global community, shared by peers. They also, I believe, accept an unstated premise that legislative and administrative decisions reflect a consensus among the participants--not a simple majority. The issue remains as to who participates--who sits at the table--but the political and administrative processes do not routinely require merely fifty-one out of a hundred votes. As a consequence, judges are cautiously conservative. They adhere to precedent and endeavor to maintain, as best they can in a changing society, a legal order that is predictable and consistent. Stability is a virtue, not a vice. They do not seek to be the catalysts of social change. They believe in democratic institutions and thus defer to the democratic institutions of governance while maintaining, indeed reinforcing in their priority of values, the rule of law