Einfluss von Corona auf Zivilverfahren in Japan
Abstract
The Corona pandemic has affected Japan’s judicial practice and, with it, civil proceedings. On the one hand, the pandemic resulted in state of emergency declarations to which the courts had to respond. On the other hand, efforts to digitalize civil proceedings, which had already existed before the pandemic, were given new impetus.
The courts initially responded to the emergency declarations in Tōkyō and other prefectures by suspending court hearings, although proceedings in particularly urgent matters, such as domestic violence cases, continued. The legal basis for those suspensions was the traditional authority of each judge to preside over hearings. Suspension and the rescheduling of proceedings were guided by action plans relating to all judges within a court; these plans were, for their part, based on a business continuity plan which had been drawn up by the Supreme Court in 2016 and subsequently updated in the course of the pandemic.
Efforts to digitalize court proceedings had already been initiated in Japan prior to the pandemic at the end of 2017 with the establishment of a corresponding discussion group, which presented a three-stage reform plan in 2018. The first phase of this reform plan has been running since March 2020 and is dedicated to the implementation of measures that are feasible already under current law through the provision of IT equipment. Specifically affected by this are the pre-hearing preparation procedure and the written preparation procedure – procedures which have rules that are in principle sufficiently flexible to also make use of web conferences. In addition to the courts, some private ADR centers and the Sendai Bar Association have now also introduced online dispute resolution procedures. In this area as well the steps date back to pre-pandemic efforts; specifically, a March 2020 report submitted by a related discussion group that could lead to a number of timely amendments to the ADR Act. Overall, therefore, the Corona pandemic has not yet led to statutory changes, its having instead mainly given new impetus to existing efforts.
