Internationalising legal education in Japan as discourse and practice

Abstract

Introduction: Japanese legal education reform and internationalising Internationalisation was a key goal of the Justice System Reform Council (JSRC 2001), which energized the movement for fundamental reform of Japanese legal education in the early twenty-? rst century. The reform process presented a unique opportunity to completely overhaul legal education in Japan from an internationalist standpoint. The Council’s recommendations, however, reA ected an idealistic view of the potential for reform. The subsequent compromise in 2004 between key stakeholders such as the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), Ministry of Justice, Japanese bar associations, lawyers and politicians1 gave way to the MEXT licensing 74 postgraduate law schools with over 5000 students. Belated strong lobbying against increasing the number of lawyers by the Japan Federation of Bar Associations and perceptions about the potential for a slide in the quality of lawyers saw the number of people able to become lawyers kept arti? cially low by the Ministry of Justice; only 3,000 candidates would be entitled to pass the national bar examination and candidates had three attempts over ? ve years to pass. Before 2004, stakeholders expected a pass rate of approximately 70 per cent; the current pass rate is less than 30 per cent.2 The result is continued intense competition to pass the national bar examination, law school courses highly relevant to the examination, and jockeying by faculties for the highest pass rate (for this and other consequences, see Kashiwagi 2010).