The Sho Sato Program in Japanese and US Law is dedicated to researching and teaching about Japanese law and Japanese-U.S. legal relationships, as well as the historical and contemporary comparative study of the Japanese and American legal systems. The program is named in honor of the late Professor Sho Sato, a distinguished Boalt faculty member for many years and a scholar of environmental, state, and local law.
One of the principal features of the program is the Sho Sato Conference Series, which invites scholars from Japan—and often from other nations as well—to Boalt Hall to present research on common themes. Various members of the law faculty who are conducting studies of Japanese law and the Japanese legal system or comparative analyses involving Japanese legal and social data also present their work at these conferences. The conference papers have been published either in the form of symposia in leading journals or in books edited by Boalt faculty. The most recent is a symposium about Japanese legal culture and recent legal reforms, published in the fall 2001 issue of The American Journal of Comparative Law. The Sho Sato Program also co-sponsored a major conference in Tokyo in 2001 titled "The Judiciary in Changing Societies," which featured legal scholars, jurists, and lawyers from Asia, Europe, and the United States.
The 2005 Sho Sato Conference focused on "Emerging Concepts of Rights in Japanese Law" and also included a symposium honoring Professor Takao Tanase from Kyoto University. For a copy of the conference program, click here.
Frequently, Boalt Hall offers courses on aspects of Japanese law taught by distinguished senior professors from Japanese university law faculties. Visiting research scholars from Japan are invited to be in residence and are available to interested law students. The program also seeks to facilitate student and faculty exchanges. Numerous Boalt Hall faculty members and students have done research and lectured in Japanese sister institutions. Professors Harry Scheiber and Robert Cooter recently have held Japan Society for Promotion of Science invitational fellowships for lectures at Japanese universities, including Tokyo (Todai), Kyoto, Kobe, Yamagata, and Waseda. Senior advisers to the Sho Sato Program include Professors Kahei Rokumoto, University of Tokyo (emeritus) and University of the Air, Japan; Takao Tanase, University of Kyoto (also president of the Japan Society for Sociology of Law); Setsuo Miyazawa, Waseda University; and Sanford Kadish, dean emeritus of Boalt Hall and a founder of the program.
Professor Eric Feldman Receives Law and Society Association Prize
Professor Eric Feldman (Boalt JD, 1989; JSP Ph.D., 1994) of the University of Pennsylvania Law School received the article prize at the 2007 annual meeting of the Law and Society Association in Berlin for “The Tuna Court: Law and Norms in the World’s Premier Fish Market.” The paper was originally presented at the Sho Sato Conference on the “Emerging Concepts of Rights in Japanese Law,” held at Boalt Hall in February 2005.
The Japanese Adversary System in Context, edited by Malcolm M. Feeley and Setsuo Miyazawa, International Political Science Association and Palgrave Macmillan (2002)
