Why the Japanese Law School System was Established: the Mechanisms of Institutional Creation.

74 law schools recently opened for the first time in Japan's history. This paper examines institutional processes by which US-style law schools became the solution to a problem of a shortage of legal professionals based on archival analyses and interviews. The establishment of law schools served interests of many players. Law professors saw increasing influence of prep schools as a problem. Furthermore, law professors in elite universities viewed the presence of the large numbers of lower-status law faculties as a threat to the prestige of their profession. They predicted only elite universities could establish a law school if rigorous requirements were introduced. Lower-status universities would then die out. As soon as a law school proposal was initiated by some professors, the Ministry of Education jumped at the opportunity. The ministry viewed the proposal as an ideal project for their plan to shift an emphasis from undergraduate to graduate-level professional education. Meantime, power holders (the Supreme Court, the Ministry of Justice, and the Japan Federation of Bar Associations) found creating a new institution (law schools) an effective way in which they could avoid substantial changes in their existing institutions: a mandatory legal training institute (the Supreme Court), the competitive bar exam (the Ministry of Justice), and the Lawyers Law prohibiting anyone but lawyers from exercising the authority to serve as representatives (JFBA). They knew that if the new institution was operated by a subordinate agency (the Ministry of Education), they could shape the form later in order to preserve their interests. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]