Description

In 2007 the Academy Award winning director of Shall We Dance released his new film, a critique of the Japanese criminal justice system from a wrongful conviction perspective. In this talk, I use the film as a vehicle to serve three disparate goals. First, I provide the first legal critique of the film, a genre of legal scholarship developing over the past 15 years. Second, I use the film to reflect on criminal justice reforms in Japan, in particular the introduction of the Lay Judge System (quasi-jury saiban-in seido) from 2009. Third, I critically ask whether use of film as a legal text assists or distracts from my primary pedagogical objectives in teaching comparative Japanese law. I conclude with a cautious recommendation of I Just Didn’t Do It as legal cinema, as a catalyst for reform of the Japanese criminal justice system and as an educational text.

About The Speaker

Professor Kent Anderson is a comparative lawyer specializing in Asia. He joined the University of Adelaide in 2012 as Pro Vice-Chancellor (International) and Professor of Law in the Adelaide Law School. He has an eclectic back-ground doing his tertiary studies in Japan, US, and the UK in Law, Politics, Economics, and Asian Studies. Kent first worked as a marketing manager with a US regional airline in Alaska, then as a practicing commercial lawyer in Hawaii, and subsequently joining academia as associate professor at Hokkaido University School of Law. For the decade before joining the University of Adelaide, Kent was a joint appointment at the Australian National University’s College of Law and Faculty of Asian Studies, where he was Director from 2007-2011. He was the Foundation Director of the School of Culture, History and Language in the ANU’s College of Asia and the Pacific.

Kent obtained his BA degree in International Politics and Economics cum laude from Middlebury College (Vermont). This included a year-abroad at Nanzan University in Japan. Subsequent to that he studied in the Faculty of Law at Kobe University, obtained an MA in Asian Studies and Juris Doctorate (JD) from Washington University, and a Magister Juris (LLM/BCL) in International and Comparative Law from Oxford University.

His research and teaching are focused on insolvency, private international law, and recently the introduction of Japan’s new quasi-jury system (saiban-in seido). He is the editor of the Journal of Japanese Law, on the editorial board of Australian Year Book of International Law, and on the editorial advisory board of Australian Journal of Asian Law.

He has been a visiting professor at Waseda, Nagoya, Kyushu, Doshisha, Ritsumeikan University and Chuo Universities in Japan, and at University of Hawaii.

Kent is a Board Member of the Asia Education Foundation and Vice-President of the Asian Studies Association of Australia. He was President of the Japanese Studies Association of Australia in 2007-2009.