Empowering the Heavenly Parent Holy Community
The Supreme Court should now move beyond its 1996 Decision, deepen its understanding of the current Constitution—which, unlike the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, expressly guarantees freedom of association—and thereby…
... the fundamental cause of the Decision’s multiple errors in interpreting both constitutional law and the Religious Corporations Act lies in its failure to recognize that Article 20, paragraph 1 of the Constitution guarantees religious…
... when the state refuses to grant legal personality to a group, or deprives it of legal personality once it has been acquired, it effectively denies that group the precondition for enjoying a wide range…
... Japan’s legal system concerning the acquisition of legal personality by intermediate groups has undergone fundamental reform. Today, the interest of such groups in acquiring and maintaining legal personality should by no means be left…
... the position that treats the freedom of association and the conferral of legal personality as separate issues has, in recent years, been significantly challenged by influential counterarguments, to the extent that it can no…
... This reasoning is premised on the view that a dissolution order has no legal effect that restricts the freedom of religion or the freedom of association (Article 20, paragraph 1 of the Constitution) of…
... believers currently cannot hold services or funerals in their churches. One cannot claim that academic freedom is intact while demolishing a university campus; likewise, prohibiting the use of all church facilities and assets is…
... when those languages allow the alleged responsibility of individuals to be projected onto entire communities, they transform stigma into structure. What began as a media narrative can then become a legal fact, and what…
... failure of a state to investigate, prosecute, or prevent these acts—particularly when that same state is pursuing the dissolution of the victim community—engages both state responsibility and the individual criminal responsibility of those officials…
The publicly available evidence points to a sustained, organized, and state-facilitated campaign against a religious minority in Japan that may well cross the threshold of Crimes Against Humanity as defined by the Rome Statute.