Legal Problems in East Asia

The non-amendment of the Japanese Constitution since 1946 is difficult to attribute to the amendment mechanism alone, 2/3 majorities in the Diet and a simple majority at a referendum. Taiwan‘s Constitution sets considerably higher thresholds: effectively, a three quarters majority in the legislature and absolute majority at referendum, combined with quorums and debate rules-quite possibly the most onerous general amendment procedure in the world. This paper compares Japan and Taiwan to explore critical issues in the theory of constitutional amendment: amendment difficulty, de facto unamendability, links between amendment difficulty and informal amendment, amendment culture. The paper suggests that the unchanging character of the Japanese Constitution and the unchangeable character of the Taiwanese Constitution are each attributable to extreme sensitivity on issues critical to national identity: renunciation of war in the case of Japan, territorial redefinition in the case of Taiwan.

AI recognition technology is evolving. And machines and robots utilizing various AI recognition technologies have now been more developed for disaster prevention, monitoring, and surveillance. The recognition technology includes facial recognition. In Japan, JR East began using facial recognition technology in July 2021 to detect a portion of released and parolees inside stations. Media found about the system in September 2021 with sharp criticism and then JR withdrew the proposal, saying that a social consensus had not yet been reached. Certainly, it would be convenient for public transportation, including railway companies, to use AI technology, including facial recognition, to prevent problems and prevent disasters. However, in this paper, the author argues that the utilization of AI technology for surveillance has major problems from the viewpoint of human rights protection and Personal Information Protection Law, thus the usage must be restrained and properly regulated by law.

Under ‘One Country, Two Systems‘ (OCTS), the Court of Final Appeal in Hong Kong has the final authority to interpret the Hong Kong Basic Law using a common law approach, while China‘s sovereign authority – the Standing Committee of the National People‘s Congress (NPCSC) – has the authority to interpret it using a socialist law approach. In order to maintain Hong Kong‘s common law system as an intrinsic component of OCTS, this paper argues that the NPCSC should adopt an approach of self-restraint with regard to the interpretation of the Hong Kong Basic Law, unless the matter at hand is manifestly a matter relating to defence and foreign affairs or falls outside the limits of Hong Kong‘s autonomy as specified by law. To this end, the present work further suggests that a dialogic mechanism – NPCSC‘s informal interpretation, as practiced – can function as a bridge to reconcile common law with socialist law components under OCTS by following the principle of subsidiarity.