6/25/2020 Details of 1999 (Gyo-Tsu) 35 | Judgments of the Supreme Court broadcast. This, as far as political broadcast is concerned, results in a difference between candidates who belong to candidate-presenting political parties and candidates who do not, which cannot be regarded merely as negligible. According to the facts established by the original instance court, reasons why such differentiation was introduced were because as the result of the introduction of the small constituency system, constituencies have become smaller, and it has become difficult to provide an equal opportunity of political broadcast to many candidates while the increase in the number of candidates was expected, candidate-presenting political parties have a broad area of election campaigning and the use of radio and television broadcast was indispensable. Considering the influence of political broadcast by radio and television, it cannot but be said that there is a room for doubt that these reasons are sufficiently reasonable to create such a major difference. However, the above reasons are not entirely groundless. Considering the fact that a political broadcast is merely a part of the election campaign, and candidates who do not belong to candidate-presenting parties can also conduct the remaining election campaign sufficiently, and this is not insufficient for conveying political views to the voters, it is not possible to find that the differences between the candidates in the provisions concerning election campaigns have reached a level which can not possibly regarded as unreasonable, and it cannot be said that these provisions have exceeded the limit of reasonable discretion of the Diet. Therefore, provisions of the amended Law on Public Election cannot be regarded as against Article 14, para.1 of the Constitution. 5. The ruling of the original instance court which is in line with the above is justifiable, and the judgment of the original instance court is not against the principles of the Constitution or articles 14, para.1, 55, 57, para.1, or 59, para.2 as argued. The arguments cannot be accepted. Therefore, the justices, with the dissenting opinion of justices KAWAI Shinichi, ENDO Mitsuo, FUKUDA Hiroshi, MOTOHARA Toshifumi, and KAJITANI Gen, unanimously rule as the main text of the judgment. Dissenting opinion of justices KAWAI Shinichi, ENDO Mitsuo, MOTOHARA Toshifumi, and KAJITANI Gen on item iii 3 of the judgment is as follows: Differing from the majority opinion, we think that the Provisions on the Demarcation of Constituency Boundaries at question in the present case is against the Constitution and the election is unlawful. The reasons are as follows: 1. The meaning of the equal value of votes under the Constitution Under the present Constitution, which is based upon representative democracy, the content of the right of the people in electing the members of the Diet, i.e. the requirement that the value of each vote is equal, derives from the Constitution. This is because while people participate in politics via members of the Diet who are their representatives, since the right to take part in politics should be equal, it is required that the right to elect members of the Diet should also be always equal. This requirement is the natural result of the principle of equality under law which is one of the fundamental rights of the people, and also the principle of organisation of the Diet, i.e. 'both houses are composed of elected members who represent the people'. This requirement is the most important and fundamental criterion when the Diet determines the actual system of election. 2. Limits of the equal value of votes 1) If the equality of the value of the votes is pursued to the maximum, the value of each voter's vote has to be identical in appearance as well as in substance. However, when adopting a system of election based upon constituencies, it cannot be denied that it is difficult strictly to comply with this requirement, since factors not related to the numbers of population or technical factors, such as administrative division, size, transportation, geography, are involved. However, even if it is the result of taking into account these factors, if the number of https://www.courts.go.jp/app/hanrei_en/detail?id=458 8/23