Japan’s Elections: In Unconstitutional State But Not Unconstitutional
Source: Wall Street Journal
On Wednesday, Japans highest court ruled that the landslide election victory last December that swept Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to power was in a state of unconstitutionality.
The ruling was in response to a suit brought by legal activists who claimed that the disparity between the number of votes it took to elect a lawmaker in the most populous and least inhabited districts goes against the right to equality enshrined in the nations constitution.
The Supreme Court said that the 2.43 vote weight disparity in December, like the last election was grossly unfair, according to local media.
But heres the catch: being in a state of unconstitutionality is just one of various shades of constitutionality that the courts have devised to measure the gravity of the offense. Theres also unconstitutional but valid-a more severe ruling that still falls short of nullification before the final unconstitutional and invalid. Japans Supreme Court has never nullified an election outcome for violating the one person, one vote principal.
<snip>
Read more: http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2013/11/20/japans-elections-in-unconstitutional-state-but-not-unconstitutional/?mod=WSJBlog
silvershadow
(10,336 posts)davidpdx
(22,000 posts)I'm not exactly sure how their parliamentary system works. Here in Korea they elect people from districts, but then each party gets proportional seats according to the national vote count.
muriel_volestrangler
(101,397 posts)The disparity in seat size is, I presume for the districts electing 1 person by a plurality. The 11 block districts, which elect 180 between them, must surely be pretty even in terms of voters per representative - the minimum number of reps is 6 (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_general_election,_2012 ), and in those, the LDP got 28% of the vote and 32% of the seats.
dipsydoodle
(42,239 posts)is probably as big a mystery to outsiders as that of the USA. Fortunately neither have any merit or meaning outside of their own borders.
Kablooie
(18,645 posts)happyslug
(14,779 posts)The American occupiers of Japan wanted to break the power of the old Militarists. The main opposition to the Militarists were the Communists and the Rural peasants. MacArthur did not want to strengthen the Communists thus that left the rural peasants. Thus the disparity is the districts in favor or rural areas over more highly populated Urban Areas. This has become worse since the end of the occupation as more and more people left the rural areas and moved to the urban centers.
I first read of this problem in the 1970s but the party in power then and now would suffer the most if the borders were redrawn. Thus no redrawing in the 1970s and no redrawing today. Remember while Japan was a multi-party state, The Japanese Liberal Democratic Party, that party has dominated the Japanese Diet since WWII except for just a few years (The Liberal Democratic Party has ruled Japan since 1956 except for the years 1993-1994, 2009-2012).
On top of this the largest single party by votes in 1947 had been the Japanese Socialist Party. It is now a minor party, but may come back. The US did not like the fact it was the single biggest vote getter and thus supported the development of the Liberal Democratic Party. One side affect of this is that since 1947 the Courts of Japan has either been appointed by Americans (1940s only), appointed by Japanese Politicians who themselves were under strong US pressure OR appointed by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). All three groups opposed the Socialists and supported the LDP or groups that made up the LDP).
Thus the Court is being asked to ruled that the people who appointed them to the position of Judge were themselves unconstitutionally elected. i.e. the people they deal with on a party basis had no right to appoint them to the bench (Or select them for promotion to the bench, for Japan is a Civil Law Jurisdiction and lower judges are promoted upward either by politicians or other judges depending on the system).
In many ways the Civil Law System is more independent of Political pressure then the Common Law in that Judges tend to pick other Judges, but such selection often have Politician overtones that go back to who is in power in the Legislature.
Side note: The Civil Law System is also based on legislative supremacy, i.e. What ever the Legislature does is constitutional. Most Civil Law Courts can NOT rule a law violates the Constitution. In those Civil Law Jurisdiction that do permit a Court to strike down laws passed by the Legislature it is often a special court that hears such cases, and even then its powers are restricted. Japan seems to be the later. i.e its highest court can rule a law unconstitutional, but it is reluctant to do so even if the law clearly violates the Constitution. Thus the wording of this opinion, the Court thinks the law in unconstitutional, but instead of so ruling, is telling the Japanese Diet to repeal it instead. Not requiring such an repeal, but recommending it.
krkaufman
(13,438 posts)Parliament finally enacted a bill last November to reduce the number of single-constituent seats from 295 to 300
Things really do work differently there.