Zeitschrift für Japanisches Recht
Heft Nr.9 / 5. Jahrgang 2000

Reformist Conservatism and Failures of Imagination

in Japanese Legal Education

Luke Nottage*
  1. Introduction
  2. Japan’s Legal Landscape in 2020?
    1. Transformations in the Legal Profession
    2. Implications for Legal Education

III. Reformist Conservatism in Japanese Legal Education

    1. Adding Years of Legal Education in "Law School"?
    2. Focus on the Bar Examination?
    3. Possible Medium-Term Developments

IV. Conclusions

 

I.  Introduction

"When carrying out reform, there can be no great reform unless one sets out an ideal situation stating the contours of what one wants to achieve. When Jack Welsh was appointed the top manager of General Electric, he began with these words: "Reform from within an organization inevitably becomes bureaucratic. Preoccupation with detail makes it impossible to achieve major reforms. We have to discuss those reforms which those outside [the organization] see as necessary". I have always thought that these observations are correct. Likewise, reform of [Japan's] national universities will end up being small-scale if it extends only as far as people within the universities tampering with the system, due to vested interests."

I. Nakatani, Jugyôryô 300-man-en de Hâbado to Kyôsô Seyo [Compete with Harvard, Setting Tuition Fees at 3 million!], Ronza 32 [February 2000], 32-33.

 

"We suffer in the law from a failure of imagination."

J. M. Ramseyer, Products Liability Through Private Ordering,

144 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1823, 1823 (1996).