Home Outline Introduction Project Leader Masahiko IWAMURA The "Soft Law and the State-Market Relationship: Forming a Base for Education and Research of Private Ordering," which we have been proposing, has been adopted as a subject of the Global Centers of Excellence (COE) Program for fiscal year 2008. We implemented the "Soft Law in the State-Market Relationship: Strategic Formation of a Base for Education and Research of Business Law" as part of the Twenty-First Century COE Program from fiscal year 2003 to fiscal year 2007. The project we have succeeded in getting adopted is an extension of the last program and is also intended for further development. The keyword of this project is "soft law." We often define this word as a "set of rules that countries and companies find binding in the real economy and society in spite of the fact that it is neither the rule formulated by the government nor is its enforcement guaranteed by the government." Soft law can be widely seen in every area, and it plays an important role in the modern economy and society. It is also significant as a global legal form well beyond the scope of the positive law in each country. In modern society, where soft law is becoming increasingly important, it is impossible to fully understand the legal world only by traditional legal education and studies based on positive law. In response to this new situation, we have launched the "soft law project" to develop the positive law studies in our country into an interdisciplinary form of social science based on demonstrative analysis through special education and research of soft law as part of the Twenty-First Century COE Program. This project seeks to establish an interdisciplinary methodology for soft law studies and in this process; we have constructed and published our general-purpose, comprehensive database that is essential to basic soft law research. We also utilized the research base assistant system and the project researcher system in an effort to nurture young researchers, as well as coordinating project scholastic members’ lectures on soft law-related subjects. This project has won great acclaim, and we are proud that it is producing international cutting-edge results. As a matter of fact, other overseas universities have launched similar projects based on our example. The Global COE Program is intended to boost both human resource development and academic research on the basis of the Twenty-First Century COE Program results. These education and human resource development programs focus on incorporating soft law education in the curriculum of the legal and political course and facilitating lectures and disciplines by researchers in other related fields, as well as implementing the above-mentioned research base assistant system and the project researcher system. The project also involves the participation of graduate school students and research associates in summer programs in the legal and political course and dispatching them to seminars held in overseas universities. In addition, graduate school students and other researchers will be dispatched to overseas law firms and international institutes as interns and trainees so that they can have on-site experience with soft law formation. These extensive programs seek to train young researchers in developing Japan’s positive law studies into an interdisciplinary form of social science based on demonstrative analysis, as well as nurturing legal professionals who have a high level of legal knowledge based on theoretical studies on soft law and are also internationally competitive enough to contribute to formulating rules both domestically and abroad. With respect to studies, we have the basic theory section, the public regulation section, the commercial transactions section, and the intellectual property section. We will continue with the construction and publication of a comprehensive database on soft law, following the Twenty-First Century COE Program. We will also conduct a demonstrative analysis of individual soft law cases that emerged from the previous project and enhance our collaboration with overseas research organizations and bases. It is important for us to widely disseminate our study results. In the Twenty-First Century COE Program, we published our research results in the form of Soft Law Journal and discussion papers. We will go on with this style in the Global COE Program as well. We will also put more energy into internationally publicizing our study results by bringing out English publications. We need support from many concerned individuals to achieve the necessary development of international education and research bases for soft law studies, a goal which the Global COE Program aims for on the basis of the Twenty-First Century COE Program.