196 早稲田大学法務研究論叢第1号(創刊号)
Implementation and Challenges of the Waseda Immigration and Refugee Law Clinic and
the Related Externship
Shigeo MIYAGAWA
Clinical legal education in Japan started in 2004 simultaneously with the establishment of the professional law school system. The clinical legal education purports to attain three goals in its course offering. First is the education and training of law students. Second is the public service to provide high─quality legal services to the public. Third is the reform of legal practice and the development of legal theories. Waseda Law School offers eight legal clinics. The Waseda Immigration and Refugee Law Clinic is one of the clinical legal education courses. It aims at educating and training students to practice law in the field of immigration and refugee law, providing legal service to foreigners and refugees in Japan, and helping reform law practice and develop legal theories in this field of law.
The Waseda Immigration and Refugee Law Clinic dealt with cases that involved human rights protection for foreigners for ten years, particularly refugee recognition cases by the Japanese government. The Clinic helped students understand law in this field that interfaces constitutional law, administrative law, and international law; acquire legal writing skills and communication skills with foreign clients; and develop professional values to serve the public and society. To be sure, there is no genuine measurement to evaluate the educational achievement. Yet, a readily available yard stick is
Implementation and Challenges of the Waseda Immigration and Refugee Law Clinic and the Related Externship 197
the passage rate of the national bar examination. Among the students who were enrolled in the Waseda Immigration and Refugee Law Clinic in the past ten years, the accumulated bar passage rate is 61.9%, which is slightly higher than that of total Waseda Law School graduates.
With respect to providing legal services to the public, the Waseda Immigration and Refugee Law Clinic played a rather limited role without students practice rules like those in the United States. Students in the Clinic were engaged in interviewing clients, researching on human rights situations of the countries from which foreign clients come, drafting legal documents and so forth, as an assistant to the supervising attorney. Regarding these works by students, the Clinic can be assessed to have strengthened the evidence needed for the refugee recognition. The Clinic may be evaluated positively for developing young lawyers for indigent immigrants and refugees as well.
The Waseda Immigration and Refugee Law Clinic identified some of doctrinal issues in theory and practice in cases involving undocumented foreign children and refugees in the past ten years. The Clinic has not reached the level of contribution in theory and practice comparable to innocence projects in American law schools, and yet it endeavored to follow the same model. The Clinic positioned at Waseda University is expected to continue to make the best use of academic resources to help develop legal theories and reform law practice.