Systematical legal research in Indonesia has only developed in the last few years in conjunction with the implementation of the country's national law development program which is aimed at the creation of a new legal system. Efforts to develop a new and national legal system to replace the existing system inherited from the colonial period actually started as early as 1958 when the government set up the Institute for National Law Development. It is a matter of much regret that despite the good start it made and the favourable atmosphere it enjoyed, the Institute ultimately did not produce any significant results which could form the basis for a new national legal system. The deterioration of the political climate in the sixties made it impossible for the Institute to carry out its task properly.

The doctrine of judicial precedent is the cornerstone of the English legal system. Therefore, the publication of law reports, through which the development of case law can be followed, is of vital importance. Today, over 350 years since the reception of the English legal system in some Caribbean territories, the law reports published in the region do not exceed 150 volumes, most of which have been issued during the twentieth century in the larger territories of Guyana, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago. This dearth of primary legal materials has serious implications for legal education in the West Indies, and for the practice and development of a West Indian jurisprudence.

Research in law and unrelated subjects cannot be said to have reached any considerable scale until the establishment of the Faculty of Law at the University of Malaya in 1972. Until then, the only legal research being conducted was within the confines of private legal firms and government departments. Research was necessarily restricted to an ad hoc approach of instant necessity and for immediate utilisation. Now, after more than six years, the situation has changed little except that most of the new institutions and bodies concerned have individually expanded their research activities. Any coordination of research works in law remains within the bounds of sporadic cooperative efforts between individual researchers.

For some time I have been aware of the need for law librarians, not merely in Louisiana (with its system of Civil Law and its special relationship to French Civil Law) but elsewhere as well to have access to the bibliographical works which guide us through the corpus of French law. At the American Association of Law Libraries Institute on the Civil Law in Montreal in 1977, I was extremely gratified to note the high level of interest in French law—even by librarians trained in Common Law! My experiences with the Institute, coupled with the reprinting in recent years of several of the most significant French legal bibliographies convinced me that greater exposure of these works is in order. Because of the introductory nature of this article, my tendency is to omit bibliographies which are virtually unobtainable. Also omitted are general bibliographies, even though law is included, and bibliographies which simply list materials. My obvious preferences are for those works which organize, systematize and classify legal works; those which describe or evaluate the works in question; and those which provide several points of entry by means of tables and indices.

Few libraries outside the United States have either the means or the need to acquire complete holdings of American legal materials. The many capacious series of law reports, legal periodicals and legislative materials which comprise the bulk of American legal literature may in any event be beyond their reach for reasons of cost and space. If foreign libraries are interested in American legal materials at all they have limited objectives. All they need are small collections of monographs with a broad reference capability. In terms of their ideal criteria such collections are envisaged to consist of no more than several hundred basic books which might have the collective effect of presenting a comprehensive overview of the major areas of American law at a sufficient level of analytical depth to satisfy the immediate research needs of a lawyer or a legal scholar in a foreign country.

Legal research traditionally has been concerned with the development or elaboration of legal doctrines, and the raw materials of such research have been statutes, administrative regulations and rulings, and court decisions. This type of research is termed as doctrinal research. Characteristically, a legal scholar undertaking doctrinal research takes one or more legal propositions as a starting point and focus of his study. Research then takes place in the law library, where the scholar tries to locate all relevant statutes, cases and all discussions of his proposition found in encyclopedias, textbooks, treatises, and legal periodicals. If the legal concept is taken from a statute, his sources would necessarily include the statute, its legislative history and, if possible, comparable statutes in other jurisdictions. He then analyzes his readings, formulates his conclusions and writes up his study in the form of a memorandum, a brief, a periodical article or a treatise.

In one sense, legal research is undertaken by those who teach, by those who practice and by those who judge. While not underestimating the importance of such research, I will focus attention on research with certain objectives: research which is published or intended for publication.

A modern political structure was introduced to Japan by the Meiji Constitution of 1889. The basic principle of this constitution was Ten-no-Sei, a form of absolute monarchism. Sovereignty belongs to Ten-no by right of inheritance from imperial ancestors in a “Lineal succession unbroken for ages eternal” (Article I). Ten-no is described as “sacred and inviolable” (Article III).

Ladies and gentlemen, it's a very great honor for me to be able to speak to you on the subject entitled,The Japanese Way of Legal Thinking. As you probably know, many westerners believe in a myth which has developed concerning the psychology of the Japanese people. The myth tells us that many things in Japanese culture are completely opposite to everything in the western society. There is some basis for this belief. For example, when we want to call someone to come toward us, we use a wave of the hand for this purpose. However, in western society this signal is almost universally interpreted to mean waving good-bye to the person. Since the end of World War II with increased contacts between Japanese and westerners there has been a greater understanding about the psychology of the Japanese. Today, there seems to be less and less basis for this myth. At the same time, there does, however, exist a way of legal thinking which is specific to Japanese culture and her people.

In the olden days, legal research was not a necessity. The Kings, both in the Sukothai and Ayuthaya Periods, promulgated decrees when actual disputes arose. A compilation of the royal adjudications, the Mengraisartra, was attempted by certain kings in the northern territory of Thailand and was found to be comprehensive.

What the Anglo-American refers to as “law,” the German calls “Recht” and the Frenchman “droit,” the Japanese calls “ho,” a term imported from ancient China. Searching back for its oldest meaning, we find that it is a compound ideograph comprised of a character originally signifying a kind of sacred beast which accused criminals were forced to touch, its reaction instantly determining guilt or innocence, and an abbreviated form of the character for water, an ancient symbol of impartiality. Thus the original meaning combines both the concepts of revealing guilt and of fairness, a characteristic shared with the western terms. In addition, the character is used in numerous other meanings, including institution, restraint, permanence, reason or truth, exemplar, standard, and means.

Shortly after the Meiji Restoration, under the influence of French law, a modern system of judicial administration was introduced in Japan. In 1871 the Ministry of Justice was created, and in 1872 several kinds of courts were established. However, in this period, the separation of powers had not yet been implemented. Therefore, it was not until 1875, the Eighth year of the era of Meiji, that Japan established a unified judicial system. In that year, for the first time, the judicial service was separated from the executive power and became independent, except that the Ministry of Justice retained responsibility for the functioning of the courts and the appointment of all court personnel, including judges. Under “Taishinin Sho-saibansho Shokusei Shōtei” (the Rules for the Organization of the Great Court of Judicature and Various Other Courts), one highest court “Taishin-in” (the Great Court of Judicature) and two types of inferior courts “Jōtō-saibansho and Fu-kensaibansho” (Higher Courts and Provincial Courts) were set up.