6/25/2020 Details of 2017 (Gyo-Tsu) 47 | Judgments of the Supreme Court opinions remained varied among the parliamentary factions. Consequently, a report including proposals from the parliamentary factions was submitted to the President of the House of Councillors on December 26, 2014. (6) While these discussions continued, with regard to the 2013 Election, in 2014 (Gyo-Tsu) No. 155, No. 156 judgment of the Grand Bench of the Supreme Court of November 26, 2014, Minshu Vol. 68, No. 9, at 1363 (hereinafter referred to as the "2014 Grand Bench Judgment"), it was held, in line with the 2012 Grand Bench Judgment, that the abovementioned reapportionment of four seats under the 2012 Revision Act had only resulted in reapportioning seats among some constituencies while maintaining the mechanism of the election system designed to use a prefecture as a unit of constituency, and because, in fact, the maximum disparity between constituencies had stayed at around 1:5 throughout the period before and after said revision, said reapportionment of seats should inevitably be held to be insufficient to correct the extreme inequality that existed in the value of votes to such an extent that it could raise a question of unconstitutionality, and therefore it should be concluded that even after the abovementioned reapportionment of seats had been conducted under the 2012 Revision Act, the disparity between constituencies in terms of the value of votes had indicated the existence of extreme inequality to such an extent that it could raise a question of unconstitutionality. It was also pointed out that it is necessary for the Diet to take constant steps to discuss and build a consensus for a specific proposal for reform, such as making a reasonable change to the current system of setting the number of seats for each prefecture-based constituency, and further take legislative measures to reform the current mechanism of the election system itself as soon as possible, so that the abovementioned level of inequality will be corrected. (7) Upon receiving the report in (5) above, the Study Committee on the Election System Reform discussed the proposals but could not reach a common conclusion among the parliamentary factions. Therefore, on May 29, 2015, it was decided that each parliamentary faction was to draft a bill. After discussions at each parliamentary faction, the revision proposals of the parliamentary factions were largely consolidated into two proposals: Proposal [i] for the reapportionment of ten seats including merger of four prefectures into two constituencies, which would introduce mergers of lesspopulated constituencies; and Proposal [ii] for the reapportionment of twelve seats by merging twenty prefectures into ten constituencies. On July 23, 2015, two bills to partially revise the Public Offices Election Act that contained the abovementioned proposals, respectively, were submitted to the Diet. With regard to the demarcation of constituencies and the number of members to be elected in each constituency, the bill pertaining to Proposal [i] above proposed to merge Tottori Prefecture and Shimane Prefecture into one constituency with two seats, and merge Tokushima Prefecture and Kochi Prefecture into one constituency with two seats, while reducing two seats each from three constituencies and adding two seats each to five constituencies. The provision of Article 7 of the supplementary provisions of the bill stated that, in light of the House of Councillorsʼ way of being and taking into consideration correction of the disparity between constituencies in terms of the population per member, etc., review will be made continuously, definitely working toward a conclusion on the fundamental reform of the election system in preparation for an ordinary election scheduled in 2019. The bill pertaining to the Proposal [i] above to partially revise the Public Offices Election Act was enacted on July 28, 2015 (Act No. 60 of 2015; hereinafter referred to as the "2015 Revision Act"), and then put into effect on November 5, 2015 (hereinafter the provisions on the apportionment of seats after the revision by the 2015 Revision Act are referred to as the "Provisions on Apportionment of Seats"). As a result of the revision to the Public Offices Election Act by the 2015 Revision Act (hereinafter referred to as the “2015 Revision”), the i https://www.courts.go.jp/app/hanrei_en/detail?id=1534 di it b t tit i th b i f th 6/24