Legal Reform in East Asia

―The Politics of Competitive Modernization ―

March 17, 2010 6:00 PM (finished)


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Tom Ginsburg, Ph.D.

(Professor of Law at the University of Chicago)

Date/Time March 17, 2010 6:00 PM
Location Room 549 5th floor, Akamon Sogo Kenkyuto Institute of Social Science, University of Tokyo  [map]
Abstract This paper analyzes the major recent structural legal reforms in Japan, Korea and Taiwan. Since approximately 1990, all three countries have transformed their legal institutions to be more transparent and participatory. These reforms include the adoption of lay participation in criminal trials, legal training reform, expansion of administrative law regimes, and judicial change. We characterize the reform process as one of competitive modernization, a distinct feature of the Northeast Asian region. Though the substantive reforms in the three jurisdictions are similar, the process by which reforms were adopted also reveals important features of local political dynamics.
Bio Tom Ginsburg is Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, where he works on comparative and international law from an interdisciplinary perspective. He holds B.A., J.D. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California at Berkeley. One of his books, Judicial Review in New Democracies, (Cambridge University Press, 2003) won the C. Herman Pritchett Award from the American Political Science Association for best book on law and courts. He has served as a visiting professor at the University of Tokyo, Kyushu University, Seoul National University, the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Trento. He currently directs a project funded by the National Science Foundation to gather and analyze the constitutions of all independent nation-states since 1789. Before entering law teaching, he served as a legal advisor at the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal, The Hague, Netherlands, and has consulted with numerous international development agencies and governments on legal and constitutional reform.