Person:

Ramseyer, John

To study the determinants of judicial productivity and speed (measured by published opinions), I examine all 348 trial-court civil medical malpractice opinions published in Japan between 1995 and 2004. For comparative purposes, I add 120 randomly selected civil judgments from the same period. The data cover 706 judges (about a third of the Japanese bench). I find: (A) Productivity correlates with apparent intellectual ability and effort. The judges who attended the most selective universities, who passed the bar exam most quickly, and who were chosen by the courts for an elite career track publish the most opinions. (B) Adjudicatory speed correlates with apparent ability and effort too, but institutional experience counts as well. As the courts acquired increasing experience with malpractice cases, the pace of adjudication quickened.

Critics have long complained that lawyers dissipate value. Some do, of course. Some legal work dissipates more value than others, and the lawyers who focus on the most notorious rent-seeking sectors extract a heavy toll in the U.S. Whether lawyers choose to focus on value-dissipating or value-enhancing work depends on the institutional structure in place, and the American legal system apparently generates high returns to value-dissipating work. The Japanese legal system traditionally holds down such returns, and Japanese attorneys have invested much less in those sectors.

In 2006, the Japanese Supreme Court unilaterally invented an entirely new field of rent-seeking: it construed usury law to let borrowers sue for refunds of "excessive" interest they had explicitly and knowingly -- and with statutory authorization -- agreed to pay. Although borrowers swamped the courts with refund claims, the field did not attract either experienced or talented attorneys. Instead, it attracted two groups: new lawyers who had entered the bar under the relaxed licensing standards, and the least talented lawyers. At least in this sector of the rent-seeking field, the returns to experience and talent in Japan apparently remain lower than in value-enhancing sectors of the bar.

Although the executive branch appoints Japanese Supreme Court justices as it does in the United States, a personnel office under the control of the Supreme Court rotates lower court Japanese judges through a variety of posts. This creates the possibility that politicians might indirectly use the postings to reward or punish judges. For forty years, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) controlled the legislature and appointed the Supreme Court justices who in turn controlled the careers of these lower-court judges. In 1993, it temporarily lost control. We use regression analysis to examine whether the end of the LDP's electoral lock changed the court's promotion system, and find surprisingly little change. Whether before or after 1993, the Supreme Court used the personnel office to 'manage' the careers of lower court judges. The result: uniform and predictable judgments that economize on litigation costs by facilitating out-of-court settlements.

Empiricists routinely explain politically sensitive decisions of the U.S. federal courts through the party of the executive or legislature appointing the judge. That they can do so reflects the fundamental independence of the courts. After all, appointment politics will predict judicial outcomes only when judges are independent of sitting politicians. Because Japanese Supreme Court justices enjoy an independence similar to that of U.S. federal judges, I use judicial outcomes to ask whether Japanese premiers from different parties have appointed justices with different political preferences. Although the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) governed Japan for most of the postwar period, it temporarily lost power in the mid-1990s. Elsewhere, Professor Eric Rasmusen and I asked whether the administration of the lower courts changed during this non-LDP hiatus. Here, I explore whether the supreme court changed. More specifically, I ask whether the non-LDP premiers appointed supreme court justices with different policy preferences. I find that they did not.

Medieval Japanese governments only haphazardly secured property rights. To obtain their security, many landholders instead turned to temples (and monasteries). Temples paid no taxes and controlled enough resources to adjudicate and enforce resource claims. Landholders “commended” their rights in land to them and paid them a share of the harvest. The temples then exempted them from tax, adjudicated disputes, and protected them from outsiders. Effectively, the temples competed in a market for basic governmental services. By competing against the government itself, they helped forestall a predatory monopolistic state. And by helping secure property rights, they promoted investment and growth.

The Article presents a study which explores the impact of educational backgrounds on the appointment of judges in the Japanese Supreme Court. According to the author, the productivity of judges is the primary factor for the appointment in the Supreme Court. It stresses the lack of evidence to justify the favoritism toward graduates from Kyoto University and the University of Tokyo.

They left Japan in shambles. By the time they surrendered in 1945, Japan’s military leaders had slashed industrial production to 1930 levels. Not so with the American occupiers. By the time they left in 1952, they had rebuilt the economy and grown it by fifty percent. By 1960 the economy had tripled, and by 1970 tripled once more.

For Japan’s spectacular economic recovery, the American-run Allied Occupation had apparently set the stage. The Americans had occupied, and the economy had boomed. The Americans had ruled, and Japan had thrived. At least during the Occupation’s early years, the Americans had apparently planned and run a “Good Occupation.”

Or so it is often said. In fact, the Americans did nothing of the sort. When they arrived in 1945, they brought few economic plans. Rather than invent a new plan, they simply helped incumbent bureaucrats keep the legal controls they had manipulated—disastrously—throughout the War. Coming from the New Deal, many Americans brought an instinctive aversion to competitive market policies. After rehabilitating the Marxist leaders and intellectuals, the Americans let them use the legal apparatus to ideological ends. With a Socialist Premier, Japanese voters let them try.

By 1948, the voters had had enough. Under the legal controls, miners did not mine. Firms did not produce. Farmers sold, if they sold at all, only on the black market. With inflation out of control and production stuck at desultory levels, conservatives struck back. They installed the quintessentially capitalist Shigeru Yoshida as Prime Minister; Yoshida promptly shut down the planning apparatus, and Japanese voters ratified the change. Inflation stopped, the economy rebounded, and Washington politicians forced their control-inclined agents in Tokyo to acquiesce. After June 1950 (after it had already started to recover), the economy enjoyed a procurement bonus from the Korean War.