Due Process and Right to Counsel on the Investigation Process in Japan

Abstract

This paper is, first, to describe the main schemes of the right to counsel in Japan since the second word war. There are mainly three schemes of the criminal defense in Japan. First is the Court Appointed Attorney scheme which the court has responsibility to nominate the attorney to the defendant when they cannot hire the defender by themselves. Thorough the judicial reform the target of this scheme has been expanded from the defendant of the trial stage to the defendant of the post-indictment stage. Second is the Criminal Suspect Defense Aid which is to support the defendant in the post-arrest stage by the bar association. Third is the Duty Attorney scheme which was developed by the attorneys as pro-bono work for providing the defender to the suspects in the pre-trial stage. Second, this paper explains the reason and background of the development. There are two main reasons: one is the attorney's pro-bono work in the early stage of post-arrest proceedings and the other one is the judicial reform movement since 2000. Third, this paper summarizes the characteristics of the Japanese situation and point out some important issues to be solved as soon as possible. Finally, the author introduces a new movement on the defensive work, rehabilitationoriented defense, which is different from the traditional adversarial model.