6/25/2020 Details of 1999 (Gyo-Tsu) 35 | Judgments of the Supreme Court ENDO Mitsuo, MOTOHARA Toshifumi and KAJITANI Gen in their dissenting opinion, but since, in my view, the principle of the equality in the value of votes should be implemented in a very strict way, the derogation from the requirement of equality which is allowed as an exception based upon purely technical grounds when demarcating the constituency boundary should be kept well below the maximum 1:2. Therefore, I would like to give a dissenting opinion separately on the reasons for those views and other issues. Incidentally, while on the problem of the equality in the value of votes for the election of the members of the Diet, the problem with the election of the members of the House of Representatives and the problem with the election for the House of Councillors are closely related. The dissenting opinion of justices OZAKI Yukinobu, KAWAI Shinichi, ENDO Mitsuo, MOTOHARA Toshifumi, and the supplementary dissenting opinions of OZAKI Yukinobu and FUKUDA Hiroshi in the Judgment of the Grand Bench of September 2, 1998 (hereinafter, 'the 1998 Judgment') on the election of the members of the House of Councillors, which is referred to by the majority opinion, present a detailed view on this issue. I would like to refer to them whenever necessary. 2 The Diet is a body of the state which comprises representatives elected by all people, and is the supreme organ of the state (Articles 41 and 43). The reason why it is the supreme organ of the state is because the opinion of the people and various interests are concretely expressed through the activities of the members in the Diet and there is a high probability that the decision of the Diet reflects these opinion and interests, and therefore, the decision can be regarded as a result of the exercise of the right to selfdetermination by the people as a whole. In other words, the fact that the Diet is composed of members who are elected as representatives of the people by a free and fair election in which all people take part with an equal right to vote is the source of the high authority of the Diet as provided by the Constitution. The Constitution provides that the constituency, method of election, and other matters related to the election of the members of both houses are to be determined by law (Art.47). Naturally, the discretionary power of the Diet granted in enacting such laws presupposes that it is subject to some principles provided by the Constitution. The obligation to comply with the requirement of the equality in the value of votes (hereinafter, equality principle) is safeguarded by equality under the law. Only limited exceptions such as inevitable discrepancies which emerge in the course of administering the affairs which are proven to be evidently reasonable are allowed. The equality principle is significant in the same way as the guarantee of secret ballot (Article 15, para.4), and other principles provided by the Constitution in order to ensure free, equal and fair election, and when providing matters such as the constituency, method of election, and other matters related to the election of the members of both houses by law, should, as a matter of course, be observed in a strict way. The fact that this is not an ideal, but is perfectly capable of being realised is evident from the recent trends of legislation in countries with a representative democracy (see note to item 9). 3 The equality principle is best realised by using the figure obtained by dividing the nation-wide number of total votes by the total number of the seats and allocating one seat per this figure. This applies to the small constituency, medium constituency as well as the proportional constituency systems. If one intends to give an opportunity to elect a member of the Diet from a depopulated area, it is allowed only when the method of realising this goal meets the requirement of the equality principle in other areas as well. For example, it is possible to increase the number of seats allocated to densely populated areas in proportion to the numbers of population in order to give an opportunity to the depopulated areas to elect a representative. To maintain the total number of the members of the Diet and 'give favourable consideration to depopulated areas' is tantamount to 'ignoring the densely populated areas', and is in fact differentiation of the value of votes depending on the place of residence. Such differentiation is based upon the same idea as the past system in https://www.courts.go.jp/app/hanrei_en/detail?id=458 12/23