Robert Beadon and the Japanese Jury System Debate of 1878–1880

Abstract

In the second half of the 19^th Century a dispute arose within the Japanese government over the inclusion of a jury system within drafts for the Code of Criminal Instruction (治罪法 Chizai-hō), Japan’s first system of criminal procedure law based on Western law. Prosecuting the case for the retention of the jury provisions was the man entrusted with drafting Japan’s first modern legal codes, the French jurist Gustave Émile Boissonade de Fontarabie. Opposing him was the powerful bureaucrat, and senior adviser to some of the most important men in the Japanese government, Kowashi Inoue. At a critical stage in the law’s enactment another opinion was offered, an influential opinion by a little-known British adviser. Indeed, even the adviser’s identity is a matter of conjecture. The aim of this paper is to conclusively identify the author of that opinion. It argues that the opinion’s author is Robert John Beadon, an English barrister who, from 1877 to 1882, was one of the highest paid foreign employees working for the Japanese government, and at the heart of Foreign Minister Kaoru Inoue’s early efforts to revise Japan’s mid-19^th Century treaties with the Western powers.