We know many examples that the judiciary renounces its mission to deny its own raison d’etre. The Sapporo District Court has lately repeated its predecessors. The court committed in the first ruling in the country on the disputed 2015 military laws. The decision shut the door to plaintiffs, which triggers us to feel sadness, exceeding resentment.

RENUNCIATION OF JUDICIAL RIGHTS TO OBEY ADMINISTRATION

The 2015 military legislation, named the Act on National Security, approved the right of collective self-defense. It violates the constitution which ensures the right to live in peace. The group of plaintiffs in Hokkaido includes families of active soldiers of the Self Defense Forces (SDF), citizens and academicians on constitutions. The said court issued a decision on April 22.

Prior judgment of plaintiffs’ loss 

Presiding Judge Okayama Tadahiro told: ‘the right to live in peace is not a legally-assured, concrete right’, totally rejecting the litigation, and turned down the demand to stop SDF deployment abroad as ‘an inappropriate demand’. The court smartly evaded judgment to reflect the constitution, describing pointless arguments.

Currently 25 groups presented law suits in 22 prefectures in the country over the 2015 military legislation. The recent decision of the Sapporo court was the first of the legal actions, which tells us the judiciary committed a suicide. Ignited further was rage.

Legal consultants of the Hokkaido plaintiffs issued a statement with a harsh criticism: ‘the decision is extraordinarily unfair as the court does not see possibility that Japan may be involved in a war’ and ‘it was not a right decision reached through the trial process as it was set in advance to inflict a loss on the plaintiffs’ as the district court had not held any examinations of plaintiffs and testifiers nor given the plaintiffs a session to state concrete damages.

If the court remains silent on the military act, it abandons duties as its mission is to guarantee the fundamental human rights, according to the statement. The group appealed to the higher court, demanding the court sternly to fulfill the right to examine unconstitutional legislation guaranteed by the constitution.

The 2015 military legislation which admits the right of collective self-defense is unmistakably unconstitutional even though the government explains beautifully. Successive administrations of the country have justified existence of the SDF within the limit of individual right of self-defense and have rejected the right of collective self-defense in the light of the constitution. The latter goes beyond the constitutional boundary.

As for the Sunagawa suit case, on which the Abe government, allegedly, bases in endorsing the 2015 act, the Supreme Court referred in the ruling to the individual right of self-defense and did not touch at all on the collective self-defense right. Everyone knows about it.

Interpretation of constitution

The Sapporo court says that the right to live in peace is not a concrete, legally-approved right. But the Nagoya High Court told in 2008 that the right to live in peace is the basis of fundamental human rights and it is the constitutional, legal right in the wake of judicial action to sue SDF’s deployment in Iraq. The latter shows a natural interpretation of the constitution. The decision in Sapporo reveals an apparent rollback as it questions about the constitutional principle of the right to live in peace.

A mother of an active SDF soldier expressed sufferings and anxieties but the Sapporo’s ruling says that ‘possibility is low in which soldiers should be mobilized by the orders to execute the right of collective self-defense, and thus, uncertainties and fears that she feels are within an intangible domain of uneasiness’. The lawyers of the group plainly and logically repelled the description, saying ‘it is completely hollow’.

May 21, 2019