法と経済学会［Japan Law and Economics Association］

Law plays an important rolein all aspects of economic society, to solve disputes among individuals, betweenindividuals and powerful entities like governments, to maintain public order,and to ensure lawful administration. To improve the formulation and functioningof law, analysis of the wide range of social and economic effects of law isessential. Considering the lack of these analytical approaches in conventionalJapan, it is beneficial for academics and practitioners to deepen theirtheoretical and empirical analyses of the social and economic effects of law.

Conventional legal studies in Japan have mainly developed intohermeneutic studies of legislated statutes of subjective laws. Based on givenconditions of legislated statutes by the National Diet and regulations by localgovernments, through comparison of benefits between parties and considering atendency of court cases, arguments focus on which construction is most logicallyconsistent with the complex legal system.

However, it isdifficult to construct laws that are consistent with existing laws, unambiguousin meaning, and also considering multiple values simultaneously.  Moreover,legal studies have not provided an analytical framework enough to decide how thedesigning of a system by legislatures would affect the society.

 On the other hand, economic studies have developed analyticalframeworks to analyze the efficiency of resource distribution and to decide afair income distribution based on who receives how much benefit and who pays howmuch cost.  In Japan, since the economic analysis of practical aspects of lawhas not been profound, issues in the hermeneutic studies of law are notestablished research objectives in economics. Only in some cases economicresearch has been referred to, for legislation processes.

Conversely in the US, microeconomic approaches are employed toanalyze the economic effect of law - across civil, criminal, and legal studies.Courses adopted by law schools often affect the actual court practice andlegislatures.

 In Japan, research in Law and Economics is stilllimited to specific sub-fields and is a long way away from covering some of themost basic fields.  To research on topics like: how statutes and cases affectsocial wealth, who is the beneficiary, what are the benefits, who bears thecost, and so on, the approach of "Law and Economics" will provide intelligenceshared by neither legal nor economic academics. The association will serve as anetwork for sharing knowledge and information, and to establish newinterdisciplinary research activities.   "Law and Economics" will play animportant role in improving actual legal construction and court practices moreobjectively than before. Furthermore, "Law and Economics" will provide acontingent and empirical method to estimate the effect of legislature.

 Thus, we established the Japan Law and Economic Association toencourage academic activities dealing with the theory and application of "Lawand Economics", and to build a research network among academics andpractitioners.