Minor Dispute Processing in Japanese Justice System

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Other Title
  • 少額紛争処理
  • ショウガク フンソウ ショリ ショウヒシャ フンソウ オ ネントウ ニ オイテ
  • 消費者紛争を念頭において

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Although Dr. Kawashima predicted thirty years ago that Japanese people would, sooner or later, get accustomed to the modern legal way of thinking, and accordingly, come to use law courts much more frequently to settle their disputes, that prediction appears to have failed, judging from the recent judicial statistics. But this does not necessarily mean that Japanese people are still reluctant to assert their rights publicly. For example, administrative procedures are widely used by consumers when they feel their rights are violated.<br>Analyzed from a theoretical point of view, minor disputes are not suitable to be managed by formal legal procedures not only because they are of high cost but also they tend to redefine each dispute from a strictly legal viewpoint and alienate the persons concerned, who usually do not separate clearly the legal from the non-legal interests. If small claims procedures should be worked out respecting each disputant's interests and decisions which have led to the escalation of their confrontation, it seems to me that the functional differentiation and integration is vitally important between formal legal procedures and small claims procedures, the latter taking only limited roles and carrying them out with the help of other legal procedures.<br>What is important from this perspective is to specify what kind of roles small claims procedures should take, and how various legal procedures can be coordinated to form a more or less systematized justice system. I would like to present a tentative idea in this essay.

Journal

  • The Sociology of Law

    The Sociology of Law 1997 (49), 74-85,253, 1997

    The Japanese Association of Sociology of Law

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