Learning to Cultivate an International Legal Mind

  　In recent years, defamation and copyright infringement by anonymous accounts on social media have become a social problem. However, under the legal systems of most countries, including Japan, it is impossible to file a civil lawsuit without knowing the defendant's address and name, making it extremely difficult to provide relief for victims. For this reason, an increasing number of countries have established a 'system for requesting disclosure of sender information' (primarily a system for requesting social media providers to disclose the sender's IP address). However, this raises a new problem. When a Japanese person requests disclosure from a foreign social media provider, which country's laws must be followed? Private international law is the academic field that deals with such issues.

  　In the Kitazawa seminar, it is a tradition for all third-year students to collaborate on writing a single paper, and our class chose this issue as our theme. In the course of our research, we needed to learn about the systems of various foreign countries, so we collected and thoroughly analyzed legal documents from 15 countries around the world. I believe it was an extremely valuable experience for cultivating an international perspective.  

　In this seminar, we also hold weekly debates on case law related to private international law. Based on the conflicting structures of case law and academic theories, arguing for the superiority of one's own position while maintaining its consistency is good training for enhancing logical thinking skills. I believe that the legal mind cultivated through these studies will serve as a compass when confronting unforeseen problems in modern society, where various values intersect.