Witte's Foreword to Law and Christianity in Japan: The Legacy of the Great Jurists

John Witte, Emory University School of Law, is published "Foreword" to Law and Christianity in Japan: The Legacy of the Great Jurists (Grzegorz Blicharz, Kevin Doak, and Jonghyu Jeong, eds., Routledge, forthcoming 2026). Here is the abstract.

This is a brief foreword to the first comprehensive study in English of the interaction of law and Christianity in Japan over the past century and a half. The volume offers a score of case studies of major Japanese and European legal thinkers to illustrate the distinctive development of Japanese legal ideas and institutions-concerning civil and criminal procedural rights, natural law theory, rule of law, constitutional monarchy and democracy, separation of powers, and the delicate balance of protecting religious and cultural freedoms in a country where Christianity is still relatively young. What has helped to make Japanese law so distinctive is its remarkable transplantation and integration by inventive jurists of various legal norms and procedures of indigenous legal traditions, European civil law, and Anglo-American common law during a century or more of rapid and dynamic social transformation.

Download the foreword from SSRN at the link.