The Changing Times and Criminal Law

To maintain social order, it is necessary to impose appropriate punishment on those who have committed crimes. On the other hand, if citizens do not know what kind of acts are punishable as crimes, they will have to live in constant fear of punishment and will not be able to live in peace. For this reason, criminal law has a rule that no act can be punished unless it is predefined as a crime by law. However, as times change drastically, events that could not have been foreseen when the law was created inevitably occur. For example, there was a case that became a topic of discussion where the act of secretly attaching a GPS device to a former partner's car to track their movements was questioned as to whether it constituted "watching and waiting in the vicinity of a residence, etc." under the Stalker Control Act. Such incidents have arisen because GPS devices have become easily accessible to anyone.   

When such cases, unforeseen at the time of legislation, occur, it becomes necessary to determine whether it is reasonable to punish the act, considering the wording of the articles, the purpose of the articles, the legislative history, and so on. You might think that interpreting and applying the law is easy if you have the Six Codes and casebooks at hand, but that is not actually the case. Sometimes, multiple positions clash over that judgment, leading to intense debates.   

To respond to the changing times, appropriate and timely legal amendments and legislation are, of course, also necessary. Recently, the revision of criminal law provisions concerning sex crimes has been attracting significant attention. Regarding sex crimes, public perception has changed significantly, partly due to advances in research on the psychology of victims and the actual state of the damage they suffer. As a result, provisions are being reviewed in countries around the world. In Japan, major revisions were made in 2017 and 2023, but some opinions still hold that they are insufficient. Thus, it can be said that an important role of legal professionals is to consider what the legal system should be, while paying attention to research findings in related academic fields, changes in social values, and trends in other countries.