Second-Best Justice

Japanese society is as legalistic and rulebound as that of the US, yet Japanese people file far fewer lawsuits than Americans. Explanations for this behavior range from circular arguments about Japanese culture to suggestions that the Japanese court system is so slow-moving and unfriendly to plaintiffs that everyone knows better than to engage in it. However, there is much more to civil litigation in Japan, as preeminent scholar of Japanese law J. Mark Ramseyer explains in "Doing Well by Making Do: Second-Best Judging in Japanese Law." With illustrations drawn from tort claims across many domains--auto accidents, product liability, medical malpractice, landlord-tenant law, and more--Ramseyer shows that the low rate of lawsuits in Japan is compelled not by distrust of a dysfunctional system, but by a system that sorts and resolves disputes in such an overwhelmingly predictable pattern that only rarely do contesting parties find it worthwhile to involve themselves in the uncertainty of a trial. Japanese judges do not pretend to offer the level of particularized inquiry that one expects in American courts. The Japanese court system is not designed to find perfect justice. It is designed to "make do." Through close attention to key arenas of tort litigation, as well as more obscure corners of the law including labor, landlord-tenant, and consumer-finance disputes, "Doing Well by Making Do" offers a key to unlocking the aims, incentives, flaws, and virtues of the distinctive Japanese court system.