Kobundo Casebook Series Casebook Sozeiho (Casebook Tax Law: 6th edition)

This book is a casebook on tax law edited as a teaching material for law schools. It covers four particularly important areas to aspiring lawyers: basic theory, income tax, corporate tax, and inheritance and gift tax. In editing the book, we attempted to enable students to understand the application of law and the formation of case law based on specific facts. The book contains detailed “Notes and Questions” on excerpts from selected judicial precedents, reports of the Tax Commission, and other primary materials. The editors strived to help readers acquire the skills necessary to become legal professionals by following the “Notes and Questions.”
 
The original idea for this book dates back to the early 1980s. At that time, Professor Hiroshi Kaneko, one of the editors, began preparing the casebook. He had always thought that he would love to conduct classes based on a “case method” of teaching. The case method had been developed at law schools in the United States. Students prepare up to a certain number of pages for each class. The professor and students engage in an intensive dialogue, followed by discussions in the classroom. This is called the case method because it uses cases (individual judicial precedents) as discussion materials. To conduct a class using the case method, a well-developed casebook is essential.
 
With the reform of the judicial system and the establishment of law schools in the early 21st century in Japan, the need for casebooks covering major areas of tax law has increased. It was in this context that this book has been published. The co-editors (Professors Hideaki Sato, Masahiro Shibuya, and Yoshihiro Masui) were all taught by Professor Kaneko at the University of Tokyo. Each of them experienced classes at Harvard Law School in the early 1990s. The four co-editors succeeded in publishing the first edition of this book in 2004. Their collaboration utilized their areas of expertise. The editors were conscious of the subsequent evolution of teaching methods. They selected materials that would fit Japanese contexts. In addition to the casebook itself, they prepared a teaching manual for the colleagues across Japan who would use this book as a teaching tool, although the manual itself remained unpublished.
 
The casebook has since gone through several editions. In 2017, the fifth edition was published. As explained above, the basic character of this book is that of a teaching material. However, from an academic standpoint, the revisions made to this book every few years accurately reflect the development of tax law in Japan. Therefore, one can understand how the law has developed in this field merely by examining the changes in the items, questions, and references in this book.
 

(Written by MASUI Yoshihiro, Professor, Graduate Schools for Law and Politics / 2021)