The Outline of the Legal Profession Research Group

The Law School’s unifying idea—known as “Building a bridge between theory and practical affairs”—has been materialized in the research activities driven forward by this research group in the form of “Driving forward the most advanced legal theory research that is aligned with the practicing of law, which cross-borders various positive law areas.” It is hoped that the results of this research will be useful in solving issues of legal practice in the contemporary society, which is continually becoming more advanced, specifically in the areas of activity of legal professions going well beyond domestic administration of justice and the conventions surrounding it which are undergoing internationalization and even domestic diversification. Moreover, in the University of Tsukuba, which sets, “[the] pioneering of the area of field merging models,” as one of the goals of the whole university, we must also actively work more on the aforementioned issues from now on.

The Legal Profession Research Group has been organized by faculty members who are mainly in charge of the Graduate School of Business Sciences’ Legal Profession Major (Law School) [reference information: http://www.lawschool.tsukuba.ac.jp/], and it thoroughly covers the basic fields of positive law (constitution, administrative law, civil law, commercial law, code of civil procedure, criminal law, and code of criminal procedure), and as a special characteristic, it has the point of possessing not only researchers but also active practitioners as its members. This research group includes active attorneys who participate in the actual sites of real-world practicing of law, where the aforementioned cross-bordering process is truly continuing to progress in the various practical fields of civil and criminal affairs. The faculty members who are researchers in charge of these various fields of positive law are all developing research activities thereof, while always paying attention to the most advanced theoretical situations inside and outside the country, having the UK, the USA, France, or Germany as a country for comparison. This daily collaboration and cooperation between the faculty members who are practitioners and the faculty members who are researchers that make up this research group has become an essential foundation for the realization of the aforementioned goals.

Diagram. The Framework of Driving Forward Research in the Legal Profession Research Group