DESJARDINS, Albert.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Report on the Drafts of the Criminal Codes for the Empire of Japan. First edition in book form of this translated analysis of the new Japanese penal and criminal procedural codes, modelled on French jurisprudence, which were drafted in the late 1870s as part of the Meiji's modernization programme. We have traced a single institutional copy at Northwestern University.The author (1838-1897) was a Parisian law professor and a member of Tokyo's Societé de Législation comparée. The society's membership included two figures who would play a leading role in drafting the codes: the Japanese Minister of Justice and his French advisor Gustave Boissonade (1825-1910). Two years after this analysis was published, the new legal frameworks were formally promulgated, setting the stage for the introduction of a civil code in 1890.The changes introduced by the 1880 codes included outlawing torture, codifying abortion as a severe criminal offence, and exempting children under 12 from criminal responsibility for their actions.

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