Japan Press Weekly

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2014 November 26 - December 2 [POLITICS]

Japan’s top court rules 2013 Upper House election as ‘state of unconstitutionality’

The Supreme Court on November 27 issued a ruling recognizing the outrageous extent of vote-disparities in the 2013 July House of Councilors election as “a state of unconstitutionality”, but dismissed plaintiffs’ demand for invalidating the results.

The top court handed down this decision to the plaintiffs, two lawyers’ groups, which filed a total of 16 lawsuits with high courts across Japan, demanding nullification of the 2013 Upper House election results. The lawyers’ groups claimed that differences in vote values of 4.77 to 1 are unconstitutional.

The ruling was made by all 15 judges on the Grand Bench in the Supreme Court. Eleven judges supported the ruling of “a state of unconstitutionality”. Four expressed clearly that the situation is unconstitutional. Of them, one considered some of the results null and void. In past vote-value lawsuits, no top court judge considered election results to be invalid.

The top court in the ruling also stated that the current election system should be revised without delay.


Past related articles:
> Court: July Upper House election invalid due to vote-value disparity [November 29, 2013]
> JCP calls for proportional representation election system [April 4, 2013]