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6/25/2020 Details of 2017 (Gyo-Tsu) 47 | Judgments of the Supreme Court characteristics of the House of Councillors could no longer be regarded as legitimate reasons for leaving great disparity in the value of votes unaddressed for dozens of years. The Grand Bench of this court further pointed out that, with an increase in the diﬀerence in population between prefectures, given limitations to the possibility of choosing the option of increasing the total number of seats, it has become extremely diﬃcult to answer the requirement of greater equality in the value of votes, while maintaining the current mechanism designed to use a prefecture as a unit of constituency, and that despite these calls for improvement, since the 2006 Revision, no legal revisions for correcting the great inequality in the value of votes had been made before the 2010 Election. Upon comprehensive consideration of these situations, the Grand Bench of this court held that the disparity between constituencies in terms of the value of votes shown by the maximum disparity at the time of the 2010 Election had indicated the existence of extreme inequality to such an extent that it could raise a question of unconstitutionality, and also pointed out that legislative measures to reform the current mechanism of the election system itself should be taken in order to correct said inequality, such as making a reasonable change to the current system of setting the number of seats for each prefecturebased constituency, and by doing so, such extreme level of inequality that could raise questions of unconstitutionality should be eliminated as soon as possible. (4) After the 2012 Grand Bench Judgment was rendered, the bill to partially revise the Public Oﬃces Election Act was enacted on November 16, 2012 (Act No. 94 of 2012; hereinafter referred to as the "2012 Revision Act"), and then put into eﬀect on November 26, 2012 (hereinafter the provisions on the apportionment of seats after the revision by the 2012 Revision Act and before the revision by Act No. 60 of 2015 are referred to as the "Former Provisions on Apportionment of Seats"). Said bill was designed to reform the election system in preparation for an ordinary election scheduled in July 2013 by reapportioning four seats among four constituencies with regard to members to be elected by constituency. The bill contained a supplementary provision stating that review will be made continuously, working toward a conclusion regarding fundamental reform of the election system in preparation for an ordinary election scheduled in 2016. On July 21, 2013, the ﬁrst ordinary election under the Former Provisions on the Apportionment of Seats was held (this election is hereinafter referred to as the "2013 Election"). At the time of the 2013 Election, the maximum disparity between constituencies was 1:4.77. (5) In September 2013, to discuss the reform of the election system of the House of Councillors in preparation for an ordinary election scheduled in 2016, the House of Councillors established the Election System Consultation Meeting under the Study Committee on the Election System Reform. In April 2014, the chairperson of the consultation meeting presented a speciﬁc proposal for reform that consisted of reform of the mechanism of the election system, and a revised version of this proposal was later presented as well. These proposals basically aimed to merge some constituencies with a small population per member with their neighboring constituencies and reduce their seats, while adding seats to some heavily-populated constituencies, with a view to signiﬁcantly reduce the maximum disparity between constituencies. After May 2014, the consultation meeting engaged in study and discussions on, among other matters, the abovementioned proposals as well as the proposals submitted by the parliamentary factions in the House of Councillors (these proposals submitted by the parliamentary factions included a proposal for making some changes to the areas of the merged constituencies based on the abovementioned proposals, and a proposal for creating new units of constituencies that are larger than prefectures). After November 2014, the consultation meeting continued discussions to build a consensus, but failed because i i https://www.courts.go.jp/app/hanrei_en/detail?id=1534 i d i d g th li t f ti 5/24

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2017 (Gyo Tsu) 47 [Judgments concerning the constitutionality of the provisions on the apportionment of seats for members (to be elected by constituency) of the House of Councillors stipulated in Article 14 and Appended Table 3 of the Public Offices Election Act]

Judgment

Question Presented: Whether the electoral code system, in light of the migration from constituencies, should be declared unconstitutional?

Alleged Acts: The plaintiffs filed suit alleging that the apportionment scheme for Tokyo and Kanagawa are unconstitutional and invalid and the recent election utilizing that scheme should be declared invalid. When originally set for the constituency disparity had a maximum of 1:2.62. However, after migration throughout the nation, this gradually increased. At its highest in 1992, this disparity reached 1:6.59 and in 2007 went back down to 1:5.

Procedural history: In 1994, the court held that although there was grounds for a constitutional review if there was extreme parity, there was not sufficient evidence in the case before the court. Again in 2001, the court reached the same conclusion and further explained that the proper avenue for reform was through the legislative process not through the courts. The representation system then underwent revisions in the legislature.

Summary: The court determined that the 2015 revisions overcame the existence of the disparity between the constituencies. Further, the court determined that the revisions had additional correction mechanisms that would permit the constituencies that were not merged to make future changes to rectify the disparity. These revisions included merging the less-populated constituencies to reduce the disparity to 1:2.97 from the 1:5 level.

Conclusion: The voting parity by jurisdiction did not create inequality severe enough to be unconstitutional.

Legal Issue(s)

Voting Systems (Winner-take-all, proportional, etc.)

Region: Asia-Pacific

Country: Japan

Language of Decision

English

Court: Supreme Court

Election Type: General

Date of decision: Sep 17, 2017

Geolocation

Latitude: 35.73293063

Longitude: 139.7553762

: Geolocation

Primary Documents

2017 (Gyo-Tsu) 47 _ Judgments of the Supreme Court.pdf
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Election Judgments - IFES

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2017 (Gyo Tsu) 47 [Judgments concerning the constitutionality of the provisions on the apportionment of seats for members (to be elected by constituency) of the House of Councillors stipulated in Article 14 and Appended Table 3 of the Public Offices Election Act]

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