The Judicial Reform in Japan: Japan's Last Project in the 1990s

Tuesday, April 20, 2004
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
(Pacific)
Okimoto Conference Room, Encina Hall
Speaker: 
  • Kaori Daimon

Japan is known as a "non-litigious" or a "harmonious" society for its extremely low litigation rates per capita as an industrial country. Yet the nation commenced a large-scale judicial reform project in the 1990s that triplicates the number of lawyers, establishes graduate law schools, adopts a jury-like system to the criminal trials, and more. What is the cause of this reform? Has the nation transformed into the litigious society? This presentation will analyze the political economic aspect of this reform process and identify the main reason for the nation to commence this reform project in the 1990s.

Kaori Daimon is currently an assistant judge of Tokyo District Court in Japan and a J.S.M. candidate at Stanford Law School (Stanford Program in International Legal Studies). She got her LL.B. from University of Tokyo in 1998 and joined the civil case division of Tokyo District Court in 2000. Prior to coming to Stanford, she earned her LL.M. degree from Yale Law School in 2003.