Shōnenhō (The Juvenile Law)

This publication is aimed at a broad readership that has an interest in the Juvenile Law. It has been written with the aim of informing the reader about the current state of the Law as well as related issues. The existence of the Juvenile Law is well known among the Japanese general public. In particular, the rights and wrongs of affording special treatment under the Juvenile Law to minors who commit serious offenses are widely debated. However, many of the opinions voiced in such discussions are not based on an accurate understanding of the contents and application of the Juvenile Law; some clearly stem from misunderstandings of it.
 
Given this situation, this publication mainly emphasizes, above all, on drawing an accurate picture of the current state of the Juvenile Law. One point is that the Law has fewer Articles than the Criminal Procedure Code; its application in practice plays a major role in shaping its appearance. Therefore, this publication is as generous as is possible in its coverage of relevant judicial precedents, and furthermore, it offers detailed discussions of the most important of them. No textbook on the Juvenile Act has engaged the discussion of judicial precedent in such detail. Also, this publication sheds light on aspects of the Law that are not readily conveyed through judicial precedent. To this end, the work takes a proactive approach toward engaging with the basic directives that form the foundation of the Law’s contemporary application and provides statistical data to illuminate the current situation thereof.
 
At the same time, from the perspective of interpreting the Juvenile Law (which falls under positive law), this publication systematically examines the issues arising at the various points in the procedural flow involved after returning to the fundamental principle of the Juvenile Law—securing a sound development of minors. While previous works on the Law have tended to focus on its criminal policy aspects, they have not adequately incorporated the findings of research on the closely related areas of the Penal Code and the Criminal Procedure Code. With this in mind, this work develops an interpretive thesis on the Juvenile Law taking its distinctive character into consideration, based on the findings achieved by research on these related areas in its discussion of individual issues.
 
Another distinctive thing to note about this book is its detailed coverage of the issue of amendments to the Juvenile Law. In the past 15 years, the Law has gone through no less than four major revisions. Each revision reflects the circumstances of the Juvenile Law at the particular time, and in order to understand this Law as it stands today, it is essential to firmly grasp the content and nature of these amendments. This book devotes an entire chapter to the issue of amendments to the Law to provide adequate coverage. Furthermore, the relevant passages extend the discussion to the sequence in which the revisions took place, and their background, in an effort to explain them in as much detail as possible. Through this examination, the reader should be able to understand how the Juvenile Law has changed over time and anticipate what direction the Act may take as it progresses into the future.
 

(Written by KAWAIDE Toshihiro, Professor, Graduate Schools for Law and Politics / 2018)