Author: Hoko

https://www.cambridgelawreview.org/dlf-volume-iv

My former student Margarita Avramtcheva, now working at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Netherlands, has just published the article based on her thesis that I have supervised together with Erik Herber. The article examines and evaluates the role of “Prosecution Review Commission” – a unique watchdog institution in the Japanese criminal justice system. Check out “Who Will Watch the Watchmen? Evaluating the Prosecution Review Commission in Japan” from the link above! the Prosecution Review Commission in Japan! Also in tender memory of Erik Herber.

At ALSA (Asian Law and Society Association), nine scholars from Uzbekistan, the US, Japan, the UK, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, India, Vietnam, have made inspiring and informative presentations about their research over three sessions. Here is the list of presenters and titles:

• Kota Fukui (Osaka University, Japan), The State and Corporate Responses to the Pandemic, Case of Japanese Government
• Richard Powell (Nihon University, Japan), Compliance and complaints in media commentary on Malaysian movement control orders.
• Sepalika Welikala (The Open University of Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka), Legitimacy and Compliance during a pandemic – Experience from Sri Lanka
• Le Xuan Tung (Institute of Legal Studies, Ministry of Justice, Vietnam), Responses to the significant policies on Covid-19 pandemic: a perspective from Vietnam
• Richa Sharma (Gujarat National Law University, India), INDIA AND COVID-19: THE LAW ENFORCEMENT SAGA
• Mohammad Ikbal Borman (Tadulako University, Indonesia), The State Responses to the Pandemic, Case of Indonesian Government
• Hiroshi Fukurai (University of California, Santa Cruz, USA), Overcoming Vaccine Apartheid and Perpetual Zoonotic Pandemics in Asia: Original Nation Approaches to Inter-National Law (ONAIL) and Prescient Visions for the Preservation of Ecological Health and Diversity
• Weidong Ji (Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China), Monitoring of COVID-19 Epidemic: A Perspective of Comparative Sociology of Law
• Ismatov Aziz (Nagoya University, Japan), Applying ‘Super-Presidentialist’ Solutions to COVID-19 Pandemic in Central Asia

Panel organizers

Hoko Horii – Leiden University; Van Vollenhoven Institute for Law, Governance and Society / Kobe University

Kota Fukui – Osaka University, Japan

Hiroshi Fukurai – University of California, Santa Cruz

We panel organizers are planning a conference panel “Containing COVID-19 in Asia: Comparative and Cross-national Studies of Compliance, Accountability, and Enforcement in the Age of the Pandemic” at the ALSA annual conference 2021, 17-18 September 2021(https://www.alsa.network/announcements). We are currently looking for those who are interested in taking part in this panel. See below for the panel description.

If you are interested, please send your contact details, a short bio (no more than 100 words), and a presentation abstract (no more than 200 words), by 23rd July 2021 to h.horii@law.leidenuniv.nl.

Should you be interested to fulfill another role (discussant or roundtable speaker), please do let us know as well. Please also do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions, ideas, or remarks.

Panel description

During the current coronavirus pandemic, various mitigation measures led to a massive, unprecedented behavioural and policy change across the globe. The mitigation measures have had a wide range of influence on both our individual behaviour and international relations. This panel aims at studying these changes through the analytical lens of compliance, a well-studied subject in socio-legal literature.

The first session deals with individual and institutional compliance to the state mandate (e.g., mask wearing, work-from-home rules, limitations on business management). Why and when do people comply or not comply with such mitigation measures? The first waves of the studies on the COVID measures compliance mainly focused on North Atlantic States, and they identified that compliance depended mostly on practical abilities and intrinsic motivation to comply, rather than on deterrence of obedience out of fear. Would the same result apply in Asia? This panel discusses possible variables and empirical methods to evaluate them.

The second session focuses on international compliance, in which the state system generates and follows policies that seek cross-national cooperation to contain COVID, such as optimization of vaccine utilization. How does each state enforce international collaborative mitigation measures, and what entity (e.g., World Health Organization, regional alliances, and powerful state systems) is best suited to consolidate such collaborative efforts? A previous panel at Law and Society Association conference 2021 has explored the reason that many “socialist-oriented” and/or “economically-less advanced” states have largely succeeded in dealing with the coronavirus pandemic more effectively than “economically-prosperous,” “highly-advanced free-market” economies. Does the difference in political and economic orientation also play a part in differentiating the state engagement in international cooperation to contain the spread of COVID?

By discussing these possible compliance variables over the two sessions, this panel prepares for a prospective comparative research project to investigate variables for (non-)compliance to COVID mitigation measures in Asian countries. Such comparative study will not only contribute to the socio-legal studies on compliance, but also informs effective policy-making during the pandemic and beyond.

When I was a student, I “believed” the grading system and tried to excel in the system. When I did not get a good grade, I thought I was not as smart as other students with higher grade.

Ever since I started teaching my courses at university, I have been skeptical about this system. In short, I think the assumed ‘advantages’ of grading system (it motivates students, it provides them feedback that helps them to improve later, it is a reliable and clear information about their performance and learning) can be rebutted, or questionable at least. And there are downsides of the system that (at least in my view) clearly overweigh the ‘advantages’. It adds unnecessary stress and anxiety on students, administrative burden on teachers, unproductive conflicts between teachers and students about what fair grade is – and the most importantly – it actually hinders students’s meaningful learning rather than promotes it.

The grading system is so deeply ingrained in today’s education system and beyond (for instance, grades are important for students’ career prospects and opportunities outside of the school). Therefore it requires long-term and large-scale changes. Fortunately I am not alone in thinking this and there are already a few initiatives and debates on this topic – a good place to start.

https://tomprof.stanford.edu/posting/1443

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4041495/

https://thebestschools.org/magazine/eliminating-grading-system-college-pros-cons/

https://stacker.com/stories/2838/colleges-alternative-grading-systems

On May 27-30, I attended and presented at the Law and Society Association’s annual conference. In previous conferences I presented at panels that I created or joined a penal that was organized by a scholar that I already know, but this time I decided to just submit an individual abstract and see what panel my abstract is included in. Sometimes I end up in a pretty random panel complied with some common meaningless catchwords, but often times it becomes a great opportunity to meet new scholars, and get inspirations from a common thread and underlying themes that I had not been fully aware of. And that was the case at the LSA 2021. My panel consisted of researches with quite different topics yet common theoretical (perhaps philosophical even) topic. Who would think of connecting research on law on sexual violence against a minor and law on medically assisted death? And the result was that we had a wonderful conversation about consent, instrumentalism, liberalism, and legal flaws. Here is the information about the panel.

Vulnerability, Protection, and the State “CRN39-Everyday Legality”

One of law’s central functions is the protection of vulnerable persons. But how is the construction of vulnerability mediated by everyday legality – in contexts of legal pluralism, varied forms of legal consciousness, and the reach of black-letter law itself? Across substantive contexts that include sexual consent laws, polygamy, medical assistance in dying, and immigrants’ legal rights, these papers reflect classic law and society questions about the difference between law in action and the law on the books, and in so doing make salient new questions about rights, vulnerability, and alienation.

The Role of Law in Dealing With Dilemmas Between Protection and Agency of the Child: Comparative Legal Study on Age of Consent

The Role of the State in the Intra-Group Vulnerability of Women: Critical Reflection on the Theoretical Scholarship on Internal Minorities Through the Case of Polygamy Among the Bedouin-Arabs in Israel

Immigrants in Welcoming Country‘S Legal System: Considering Factors That Prevent Access to Rights Implementation

The Everyday Legality of Ending Life