Kodai Zukeyama: How to Teach How to Read Legal Provisions

2024/01/18

I do not belong to the Faculty of Law. Naturally, the students do not come only to study law either. I am in charge of an introductory law lecture for first-year students in such a faculty. The lecture content includes how to read the Roppo (Compendium of Laws), and I intend to teach it carefully from the basics. "The Arabic numerals in each article are 'paragraphs' (ko), and the kanji numerals are 'items' (go)." "If 'provided that' (tadashi) appears in a provision, the part before it is called the 'main clause' (honbun), and the part after it is called the 'proviso' (tadashigaki)," and so on. Good, with this, they should have no trouble taking full-scale legal subjects. With that thought, I ask a question on a final exam where the Roppo can be brought in: "Quote the main clause of Article X, Paragraph Y of the Civil Code." However, the results are quite poor. When they hear "main clause" (honbun), they seem to think it refers to the entire text in daily usage. Is it right to simply dismiss this as a lack of study on the students' part?

Looking back, I was never taught how to read legal provisions when I was a student in the Faculty of Law. When did I become able to read them? I believe that learning how to read the Roppo is not about acquiring knowledge, but about mastering it as a skill. Looking back again, many of my professors during my undergraduate years would open the Roppo themselves, point out the articles to be referenced, and often read them aloud. As an inexperienced student, I felt they should just quote them in the handouts if necessary, but they were actually teaching us how to read the provisions by staying close to the students' perspective. In fact, that is how I naturally became able to read provisions. To convey a skill rather than knowledge, repetitive practice is effective. If so, what I need as a teacher is a class where I demonstrate how to read the Roppo, even while students might find it tedious.

I feel that part of the expertise learned at university resides in such skills and sensitivity to wording. Even if one is in an environment far from their specialty after graduation, it is as unforgettable as riding a bicycle. Any decent law student would pay attention to the difference between a "judgment" (hanketsu) and a "ruling" (kettei) in a trial, and could not help but feel a sense of unease at the phrase "the defendant (hikokunin) in a civil lawsuit."

On the other hand, skills and sensitivities are difficult for outsiders to see. Especially now, as expertise becomes increasingly specialized and research becomes globalized, the barriers to dialogue between academic fields are rising. One of the benefits of teaching law in a non-Faculty of Law is the ability to inevitably visualize the skills and sensitivities that are taken for granted in legal studies. There is much for legal scholars to learn from the environment of a non-Faculty of Law.