The Death of Japanese Legal Studies? An American Perspective

Abstract

There was once a time in American legal education when elite law schools prioritized the study of Japanese law and legal institutions. Hiring committees competed to hire scholars who spoke Japanese and had acquired significant expertise in Japan. Students saw opportunity in learning about Japan, which had risen from postwar devastation into the world’s second largest economy. Law firms sought young talented associates knowledgeable about the Japanese legal system who could help with cross border transactions. No longer. Perhaps inevitably, the commitment to Japanese legal studies in the US has gradually disappeared.

The failure to maintain Japan as a focus of legal study is emblematic of the overall neglect of US law schools to ensure that students learn about law and legal institutions outside of the US. There are significant costs to that failure, three of which this article highlights. First, learning about other legal systems provides a degree of conceptual richness that is often absent from standard law school classes. Second, there is much that we in the US can learn from other jurisdictions, which may rely on legal structures and practices that are more effective or efficient than our own. Third, developing expertise in other legal systems enables one to bring an outsider’s perspective to domestic challenges, a process one might think of as learning for other places.

This article will describe the rise and fall of Japanese legal studies in the US, explaining the factors that led many top law schools in the US to hire experts in Japanese law in the mid to late 20th century and to retreat from that priority over the past few decades. It will contextualize the law school experience by discussing the current state of Japanese studies in US higher education more generally and exploring the degree to which a focus on China has supplanted the focus on Japan. Finally, it will illustrate what has been lost as a result of the abandonment of learning about, learning from, and learning for Japan.

Keywords: Japanese legal studies, legal education, law firms, Japan, other legal systems, other jurisdictions, legal structures, legal practice, Japanese law, US higher education, Asian legal studies, cross-border study