Lawyers and the Construction of Public Problems in Contemporary Japan

Since the 1950s, several Japanese lawyers have played a major role in the construction of public problems and the organisation of collective action and legal mobilisation in order to defend weak interest groups (workers, consumers, inhabitants, victims, etc.), obtaining significant legislative changes in the process (e.g. Kitamura, Hirano, Noguchi, Kojima, Kakita & Kuwaki 1959; Upham 1979; Kawahito 2014). 

This presentation will focus on the role of Japanese lawyers in two particular cases of social and legal mobilisation: karōshi/karōjisatsu mondai (death or suicide by overwork / work-related cerebro-cardiovascular diseases) and kure-sara mondai (over-indebtedness / over-borrowing / predatory lending). 

By highlighting lawyers’ involvement in each case (legal mobilisation, strategy, network, resources, context, etc.), we aim to compare the conditions (economic, social, political and judiciary) under which lawyers managed to obtain – or not – legislative and social change. 

About the speaker
 

Adrienne Sala is a lecturer at Sciences Po school in Lyon, a postdoctoral researcher at the Lyon Institute of East Asian Studies (IAO), and a member of the France-Japan Foundation at the School of Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS). She defended her PhD thesis at the EHESS in 2016, titled « The Evolution of the Consumer Credit Regulation in Japan - A Political Economic History ». Her current research topics focus on consumer credit regulation’s changes and on the role of lawyers in social and legal mobilizations.

Date Tuesday, June 19, 2018
Time From 12:30 to 14:00
Venue Maison franco-japonaise (Nichifutsu Kaikan), room 601 (6th floor) 
Address 3-9-25, Ebisu, Shibuya-ku
Access JR Ebisu station, East Exit
Info 03-5421-7641
Admission fee Free of charge (but pre-registration is mandatory)
Language English (no translation)
Deadline for registration Thursday, June 14, 2018, 17:00

This is a brown bag lunch seminar, please bring your bento or sandwiches. Coffee available.

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