American dispute resolution is more adversarial, compared with systems of other
economically advanced countries. Americans more often rely on legal threats and lawsuits …

Criminal proceedings in which people can lose life, liberty, or reputation tell us a great deal
about the character of any society. In Japan, it is prosecutors who wield the greatest control …

Good government must avoid bad decisions. Because contemporary governments tend to
undertake an ambitious range of social and economic regulation, they can do tremendous …

Listen for a while to crime victims and you will hear both frustration and resignation about
plea bargaining, but you will hear no true believers. Some crime victims sound relieved that …

The role of the US Supreme Court in the aftermath of the 2000 presidential election raised
questions in the minds of many Americans about the relationships between judges and …

This paper examines how the organization of a civil-law judiciary—the German labour court
system—shapes court performance. It is argued that civil-law judiciaries can be considered …

Theory suggests that Japanese politicians have weaker incentives than US politicians to
keep lower court judges independent. Accordingly, we hypothesize that Japanese lower …

This article examines the strategic interaction between a defendant and a prosecutor during
the plea bargaining process. A four‐stage game of incomplete information is developed …

Judicial behavior refers to what courts and judges do. The extent to which judges choose to
move beyond their policy preferences divides the field of law and politics. Normatively …

This article explores the dynamics of shareholder litigation in a heretofore overlooked
context: Japan. Following a 1993 reduction of filing fees, the number of shareholder …