If there is to be any amendment to the Constitution, the substance of the Abe Cabinet's 2014 reinterpretation of Article 9 to allow collective self-defense should be made part of the proposal or withdrawn entirely.
The media should stop giving the Abe administration's "reinterpretation" of Article 9 a legitimacy and validity that it does not enjoy under Japan's constitutional system.
The most serious problem with the recommendations of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's advisory panel on reinterpreting Article 9 of the Consititution is that they reflect a result-oriented analysis driven by national security imperatives rather than constitutional law principles.
The pressure is mounting to either amend Article 9, the war-renouncing provision of Japan's Constitution, or to increasingly disregard it and so make it irrelevant. In April the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) published its proposal for amending the Constitution, and the dangers it posed ...
The Liberal Democratic Party published its new draft constitutional amendment proposal in late April. The draft reflects a number of significant changes above and beyond those advanced in the proposal unveiled by the LDP in 2005. The proposal includes a complete overhaul of Article ...
U.S. President Barack Obama's announcement last month that the U.S. would support an Indian bid for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council may reinvigorate the process of Security Council reform. Japan too has made permanent membership in the Security Council a high ...
The prime minister's advisory panel on national security has recommended a reconsideration of Japan's adherence to the so-called three nonnuclear principles. The panel specifically urged that the third principle, the prohibition on the introduction of nuclear weapons into Japan (which forbids not only the ...
The current debate in the United States over the war effort in Afghanistan contains no shortage of opinions on the best strategy for defeating the Taliban, but far too little discussion regarding the actual objectives of the war. The famous Prussian strategist Carl von ...
A year ago this week, the Supreme Court of Japan issued a judgment that struck down a clause in the Nationality Act as being a violation of the Constitution. There are good reasons for everyone in Japan to celebrate that decision. While little noted ...
Once again the issue of Japanese contributions to international security efforts is the subject of tortured debate. And once again the proposed government policy, and aspects of the debate itself, reveals fundamental misunderstanding of the relationship between Article 9 of the Constitution and the ...
