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Meiji University Law in Japan Program 2015 ended on August 7. The program was a short-term summer law course in which participants took classes on Japanese law and legal systems in English.

This year’s program saw 22 students and adults from a variety of countries take the course, including Brazil, China, France, Hungary, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, Romania, Russia and the Unites States of America. Students from our affiliate law schools, Nanjing Normal University, School of Law and the University of Sao Paulo, School of Law also joined. In addition, four students from Meiji University School of Law took part, taking the total number of participants to 26.

The Lectures covered constitutional law, criminal law, civil justice, family law, corporate law, competition law, tax law, information law, intellectual property law and international law, as well as the development of Japan’s judiciary system and system of legal professionals.

The courses included regular Q&A sessions and the participants were extremely active in asking questions and making comments. Many of the questions and comments compared Japanese laws and legal systems to those of the participants’ home countries, and the objective of providing the participants with an outline of Japanese laws and legal system from a broader social context was by and large achieved.

Field trips were taken to the National Diet, the House of the Representatives Legislative Bureau, the Tokyo District Court, a corporate legal division, a law firm, the Yokohama Prison and the Haneda Airport District Immigration Office with the aim of developing the knowledge acquired through the lectures in a more specific and meaningful way.

Lectures and Q&A sessions were provided by staff at various field trip locations with the aim of increasing the participants’ understanding of Japanese law in the context of practical workplaces, including the judiciary, legislature, and administrative and corporate workplaces.

The participants were particularly interested in and satisfied by a field trip to the district court - after sitting in on some of the cases they asked a series of enthusiastic questions about the operation of Japanese criminal courts and the Japanese jury system.

On the final day, a ceremony was held to award a certificate of completion to each participants. The farewell party was also hosted at which the participants, teachers and program assistants enjoyed sharing their experiences and opinions of the program.

The School of Law plans to hold the Law in Japan Program next in the summer of 2016.