Self-regulation in Japanese and German private law
Already in the era of the Hanseatic League, self-regulation was an attractive mechanism that allowed parties to engage in cross-border commerce without state intervention and according to rules of their own design. Today as well, self-regulation is an effective means offering quick and flexible solutions to challenges posed by global trade and technological advances. Now, in a special issue commemorating the 20th anniversary of the “Journal of Japanese Law”, editors Harald Baum, Moritz Bälz and Marc Dernauer, together with an array of internationally renowned private law and business law scholars, examine the importance of self-regulation in Germany and Japan from a comparative perspective.
In Japan, self-regulation is commonly referred to as “soft law” and is, as in Germany, assuming steadily greater importance. The topic has, unsurprisingly, met with increasing attention in international legal scholarship. Nevertheless, the systematic evaluation and comparative assessment of self-regulation in private law scholarship is still in its infant stages. In the current special issue of the Journal of Japanese Law, the authors illuminate the highly complex and multi-faceted phenomenon from both a scholarly and a practice-oriented perspective. The publication brings together for a first time comparative studies on self-regulation from various areas of Japanese and German private law. The commemorative issue assembles the papers and findings presented at the symposium “Self-regulation in Private Law in Japan and Germany”, held in November 2016 at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law.
The Journal of Japanese Law (ZJapanR/J.Japan.L.) is presently the world’s only western language publication offering a regular and timely documentation and analysis of the myriad lines of development in Japanese law. Its goal is to make all areas of the Japanese legal system accessible in a comprehensive and methodologically structured manner. Harald Baum, project leader of the Japan Unit at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law, founded the Journal in 1996.