Articles

Comparative Law in Perspective
(p. 1)
by Dan Fenno Henderson                                    

From Japan's Death Row to Freedom
(p. 11)
by Daniel H. Foote                                                       

Comments

Out of Sight, Out of Mind: United States Immigration
Law and Policy as Applied to Filipino-Amerasians
(p. 105)
by Joseph M. Ahern

Establishing a Stock Corporation in Japan After
the 1990 Revision of the Commercial Code
(p. 127)
by Bruce W. MacLennan

Philippine Foreign Investment Efforts: The Foreign
Investments Act and the Local Governments Code
(p. 169)
by John F. Pierce

Translation

Contract Societies: Japan and the United States Contrasted
(p. 199)
Written by Shinichiro Michida
Translation by Veronica L. Taylor

Abstracts 

Comparative Law in Perspective
by Dan Fenno Henderson 

The use and study of comparative law has grown in scope and in importance - and no more so than in the area of commercial exchange between the United States and Japan.  Comparative law is being applied more practically in the Courts; it is an agent of change and of harmonization between different peoples and economies.  However, the respective concepts of law and its role in society, as well as the role of language in understanding the law, continue to make the use and study of comparative law a challenge.  A real sensitivity to the cultural, structural and conceptual differences in the civil and common law systems requires an understanding of these problems.

From Japan's Death Row to Freedom
by Daniel H. Foote        

In 1975, the Japanese Supreme Court relaxed the standards governing the grant of retrials in criminal cases.  Since then four death row inmates have obtained new trials and ultimate vindication through acquittals.  The facts of the four cases are compelling: all involved highly publicized murders, rather harsh investigations leading to confessions that the defendants subsequently disavowed, and seemingly routine convictions followed by decades-long struggles by the convicted men to forestall their executions and secure retrials.  Each of the men spent over 25 years on death row before the final determination that he had been unjustly convicted.  In this article, Professor Foote examines these cases and their implications for criminal justice in Japan.  While the gravity of the crimes and other circumstances render these cases - which all involve crimes committed over 35 years ago - atypical in some ways, in many other respects the cases reveal basic features in Japan's criminal justice system that continue to this day.  Moreover, by providing a graphic reminder that - even in a system, such as Japan's, that prides itself on accuracy in fact-finding and provides investigators with a wise array of tools to ferret out the truth - individuals may be mistakenly convicted and executed for crimes they never committed, these cases have engendered much soul-searching by Japanese criminal justice officials, judges, attorneys and scholars and have led to numerous proposals for reform.  This article explores these proposals and seeks to appraise their likely impact on Japan's criminal justice system.                                              

Out of Sight, Out of Mind: United States Immigration
Law and Policy as Applied to Filipino-Amerasians
by Joseph M. Ahern

Establishing a Stock Corporation in Japan After
the 1990 Revision of the Commercial Code
by Bruce W. MacLennan

Philippine Foreign Investment Efforts: The Foreign
Investments Act and the Local Governments Code
by John F. Pierce

Contract Societies: Japan and the
United States Contrasted
Written by Shinichiro Michida
Translation by Veronica L. Taylor