Surnames, Same Sex Marriage and the Interesting Evolution of Constitutional Litigation in Japan

In this seminar, Professor Jones will summarize a recent paper in which he offers a new heuristic for understanding how and why constitutional claims are litigated in Japan. He offers a number of common features to the small and seemingly unrelated instances in which the Supreme Court of Japan has found a statute unconstitutional. He uses this heuristic to understand certain constitutional challenges currently in the news, including those relating to marriage equality and spousal surnames.

 

Colin P.A. Jones is originally from Calgary and is now a professor at Doshisha Law School in Kyoto. He also practices as a corporate lawyer and sits on public company boards.  As a scholar he has published widely in both English and Japanese with a focus on the Japanese legal system. His books include, The Japanese Legal System (2nd ed., co-authored with Franks S. Ravitch and Koji Higashikawa) and The Annotated Constitution of Japan: a Handbook (editor, MHM Limited).

 

More recently in Japanese he published Gaikokujin to Nihonkokukenpo (foreign nationals and the Japanese constitution), which offers a different perspective on prevailing theories on the degre to which foreign nationals enjoy the protections of the Japanese constitution.  Professor Jones also wrote a longstanding newspaper column for the Japan Times, which have been compiled into a book, Obey, Not Know: Essays in Japanese Law and Society. He is a Life Member at Clare Hall, Cambridge University.  

 

This event is part of The Japan Seminar Series, presented by the Centre for the Study of Global Japan and the Asian Institute at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, University of Toronto.