Court rules defunct eugenics law unconstitutional, but rejects damages

Claims have always been rejected with that eugenic law. Such a shame !

How such an inhuman law was accepted, only abolished in 1996

A Japanese court on Tuesday ruled as unconstitutional the now-defunct eugenics protection law that authorized the government to stop people with disabilities from having children, but rejected a claim for damages sought by five people.

And people say horrific crimes against humanity are not occurring now, in developed nations. They are just ignored, like with mass graves in native American schools.

This is the legacy and moral authority of Japan, not a pandemic Olympic medal count.

This is SO WRONG, these effected people must and should be compensated.

How such an inhuman law was accepted, only abolished in 1996

Hardly surprising when you consider that it was still legal to distribute child pornography until about 10 years ago.

Give them the money. You took away their life and family line. That's the least you can do (although I think you could do a lot more).

Abolished in 1996 after an individual’s appeal to the UN.

Current Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso had been in the parliament already 10 years, ‘former’ Prime Minister Shinzo Abe also was there since 1993, Suga just elected that same year but obviously already involved in the party.

One wonders what kind of things they would still be happy to do if they could. Surely later this month they will be surprised to learn Paralympics athletes have children.

SpeedToday  08:57 am JST

Give them the money. You took away their life and family line. That's the least you can do (although I think you could do a lot more).

When you say “that’s the least they can do” you are already saying that you think they could do more, no need to say it twice.

When you say “that’s the least they can do” you are already saying that you think they could do more, no need to say it twice.

see how annoying it is ??

A blast from the past... It is 2021. And a court rules eugenics law unconsitutional. They definitely took their time.

This shows us the useless side of the courts in terms of enforcing constitutional rights in Japan. The important point isn't that the court in this instance rejected the claim for compensation per se, but rather that the law itself was allowed to stand for so long - until 1996 - despite obviously conflicting with several rights found in the Constitution.

And importantly the courts had nothing to do with the end of this law, it was the act of that woman mentioned in the last paragraph of the article who basically shamed the Diet - not the courts - into abolishing it. If the courts had been doing their job properly they would have declared this law unconstitutional way before that. But the courts in Japan will almost never find a piece of legislation to violate constitutional rights even when they quite flagrantly do so. Its one of the only court systems in the democratic world which fails to fulfill its function in this regard.

"This shows us the useless side of the courts in terms of enforcing constitutional rights..." I'm not sure that the courts view anything in terms of constitutional rights, only in terms of obligations...

Well, not to nitpick but the Courts are at least aware of the difference between rights and obligation. But when reviewing legislation for its conformity with constitutional rights they have developed a standard of review that is so deferential to the government that its almost impossible for a plaintiff to succeed. The Supreme Court will weigh the importance and rationale of the legislation in question against the seriousness of the infringement of the right on the other. If they find the former outweighs the latter, they will uphold the legislation even when it violates a constitutional right. Its not hard for the judges to find that legislation is in some way rational on the one hand, and that an infringement of rights is trivial on the other so they've developed a very rich jurisprudence of using this standard to basically say that legislation is always OK, except in really rare cases where the violation is so arbitrary and unreasonable that its basically impossible to defend (which rarely happens).

Technically in this case the court actually DID find that the law was unconstitutional of course, but this was obviously very easy for it to do since the government itself had decided the same thing 25 years ago and so it was no longer an issue.

The judiciary is by far the most conservative wing of the Japanese government.

Yes, this is probably true.

The lowest point touched by Japan... cannot find words to express my disgust at those who drafted, voted, implemented and kept silent about it over the years. We all owe to people with different abilities for the way they were discriminated against. By the way, the great majority of Japanese still have a very long way to go and far too much to learn on the subject. Japan start changing, it's time to catch up !