In several fields, modern academics trumpet the contingency of social science and the indeterminacy of institutional structures. The Japanese experience during the first half of the 20th century, however, instead tracks what much-derided chauvinists have claimed all along: modern legal...

Although the executive branch appoints Japanese Supreme Court justices as it does in the United States, a personnel office under the control of the Supreme Court rotates lower court Japanese judges through a variety of posts. This creates the possibility that politicians might indirectly use the...

Using micro-level data on attorney incomes in 2004, we reconstruct the industrial organization of the Japanese legal services industry. These data suggest a somewhat bifurcated bar, with two sources of unusually high income: talent in Tokyo, and scarcity elsewhere. The most talented would-be...