–Richard Albert, Boston College Law School
Last semester here at Boston College, we convened a panel discussion on “The War on Japan’s Pacifist Constitution. The video for this program is now available here.
The panel featured Tom Ginsburg (Chicago), Tokujin Matsudaira (Kanagawa) and Franziska Seraphim (Boston College).
Tom Ginsburg has written about the Japanese Constitution in several works, notably in The Endurance of National Constitutions. Tokujin Matsudaira has critiqued the incumbent Abe government’s erosion of the Constitution’s Pacifism Clause. And Franziska Seraphim has written an important book on War Memory and Social Politics in Japan. I served as moderator for the event, and drew from my recent paper on Amending Constitutional Amendment Rules to discuss the recent efforts to amend the formal amendment rules in the Japanese Constitution.
The panel discussion was video recorded and is now available for viewing here. (The first speaker begins at 6:15.) The event was hosted by the Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy.
