著者

高澤 弘明

出版者

日本法政学会

雑誌

法政論叢 (ISSN:03865266)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.52, no.1, pp.155-167, 2016-02-25

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When Arasuke Sone, the Chief Secretary of the House of Representatives, announced that the fire that destroyed the Imperial Diet Building on January 20, 1891 was caused by an electric circuit short. The electricity supplier, Tokyo Dento (Tokyo Electric Light Company), filed a civil action against Sone in the Tokyo District Court in order to seek a correction of his announcement. The Yamagata Cabinet regarded this suit case as an administrative one, and intended, depending on the cabinet decision, to give to the court an order that the court should reject the case on the grounds that it lay outside the court's jurisdiction. Akiyoshi Yamada, Minister of Justice, alone dissented from this motion. He submitted, however, a written opinion arguing that the position of the cabinet should be proclaimed in court in accordance with due process under the Code of Civil Procedure at the time. While Yamada's opinion was consequently adopted, this in a sense prevented executive interference in the judiciary and differed sharply from Yamada's response to the Otsu incident (a failed assassination attempt on the then Tsesarevich of Russia on Japanese soil) four months later. In this paper, I examine Yamada's view of the independence of the judiciary through the lens of the Diet Building fire shortly before the Otsu incident.