Law And Public Policy In Contemporary Japan

In contemporary Japan, a great and increasing number of policy theorists and practitioners have engaged in law-related study, and many jurists have got involved in policy-oriented research. There are three major areas of law and public policy. The first field is that of legislative study, which covers the legislative process and technical skills used in the process. The second is the policy-oriented administration of laws by local government officials. The third is the domain of law and policy, which broadly refers to the branch of knowledge that studies policy design in terms of law. Despite their remarkable development in the past three decades, few attempts have been made to review the three areas in the literature of comparative policy analysis in the English-speaking world, much less ones to examine them in depth. To fill this gap in the literature, this chapter discusses the history, current state, and prospect of legislative study, policy-oriented legal administration, and law and policy. I begin with a look at the development and divisions of legislative study, while sketching the course of enactment in Japan. Next, an overview of the policy-oriented local administration of law and its background is provided. Then, I offer a survey of law and policy, with special reference to a related field, namely law and economics. Furthermore, I proceed to identify three contemporary features of the areas previously reviewed and to suggest remedies for the weaknesses involved in some of these features. The chapter concludes by pointing out the implications that these domains of Japanese law and public policy might have for other societies.