New Legislative Agendas, Legal Professionals and Dispute Resolution in Australia and Japan: 2009-2010
Ritsumeikan Law Review, Vol. 28, pp. 1-55, 2011
45 Pages Posted: 10 Aug 2010 Last revised: 25 Jun 2013
Date Written: August 10, 2010
Abstract
This paper is the third in a series of edited and updated selections of my postings to the ‘East Asia Forum’ blog (indicated with a double asterisk in the Table of Contents below) and my partly-overlapping ‘Japanese Law and the Asia-Pacific’ blog. They mainly cover developments from mid-2009 through to mid-2010, with a focus on law and policy in Australia and Japan in a wider regional and sometimes global context.
Half of the postings introduce some new policy and legislative agendas proclaimed by the then Prime Ministers of Australia (Kevin Rudd, in late July 2009) and Japan (Yukio Hatoyama, through the Democratic Party of Japan [DPJ] which he led to a remarkable general election victory in late August 2009). Both had resigned by mid-2010, indicating some of the difficulties involved in implementing ambitious reforms in both countries. All the more so, perhaps, if innovative measures are to be added to both countries’ Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) in order to foster more sustainable socio-economic development in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC).
The remaining postings end by introducing Australia’s regime for international (and domestic) commercial arbitration enacted in mid-2010, centred on a United Nations Model Law – like Japan’s Arbitration Act of 2003. However it sets these enactments in broader context by focusing on legal professionals – lawyers, judges and specialists in Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) – as well as aspects of the legal education systems in both countries. Those systems will need to gel better as well for both Australia and Japan to achieve the ‘cultural reform’ needed to generate sustainable critical mass in commercial (and investor-state) arbitration activity.
The order of postings has been changed somewhat in this paper to create more of a ‘chain novel’ narrative effect. However, as with the previous two papers, readers may still prefer to move around the topics in a different order.
Keywords: Japanese law, Australian law, Asian law, comparative law, international trade and investment law, Australia-Japan bilateral relations, regional economic integration, arbitration, ADR, legal profession, consumer law
JEL Classification: K10, K13, K30, K33
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation