Waseda University,
Tokyo, Japan
Cornell Law School may send up to four students to Waseda each academic year. As a result of recent reforms in Japanese legal education, Waseda has created a professional post-graduate Law School (WLS). Exchange students will take classes in that institution, and perhaps also in Waseda’s undergraduate or graduate law programs. Cornell students are expected to go to Waseda in the Fall Semester.
Language of Instruction:
Japanese
Location:
Waseda is one of Japan's top private, coeducational institutions of higher learning. Its law school is located in a pleasant campus setting in Tokyo.
Academic Calendar:
The 2007 Fall Semester ("Second Term") dates are: 21 September 2007 to 8 February 2008.
Please Note: Most WLS courses are two-credit courses taught for fifteen weeks. Each class meets once a week, for 90 minutes per session. Students attending WLS during the fall semester will be allowed to finish their study at WLS by the last class in December and earn full-semester credits for enrolled courses. Appropriate methods of evaluation will be arranged in order to compensate for the missed January classes in consultation with the exchange coordinator of the home institution. Because of the shortened period of residence at Waseda, Cornell students should expect to enroll in the equivalent of 14 Waseda credits in order to earn 12 Cornell credits.
Sample Courses (the following information comes from Waseda’s web site): WLS courses are mainly designed for Japanese students who will pursue a professional career in the practice of law. Exchange students may find the content of these courses too specialized for their purpose of legal study abroad. If the instructor of a given law school course deems it more appropriate, the exchange student may be advised to take, in lieu of a law school course, a more general undergraduate course offered at the Faculty of Law or a graduate course offering a more academic approach to comparative legal studies offered at the Graduate School of Law, as long as the same instructor teaches the undergraduate course or the graduate course. Almost all WLS courses are taught in Japanese. Given the fact that some exchange students wish to take a few courses conducted in English, WLS will offer four courses in English in the fall semester of 2004. These courses are: “Modern Japanese Law,” jointly taught by Professors Yoichiro Hamabe, Satoru Shinomiya, Takao Suami, and Toshiro Ueyanagi, “Japanese Legal Culture,” jointly taught by Professors Hiroshi Asako, Shigeo Miyagawa, and Yoshitaka Wada “International Trade Law,” taught by Professor Akio Shimizu “Comparative Finance Law,” taught by Professor Takashi Kubota. The instructor of each course will use a method of evaluation appropriate for the given course and an exchange student. Methods may include written examinations, oral examinations, or a research paper of approximately 20 double-spaced pages for two credits. Either Japanese or English may be used. If an exchange student wishes to write a substantial research paper of more than 40 double-spaced pages for an additional two credits, he/she may take “Special Study on Japanese Law: Supervised Research Paper” offered at the Graduate School of Law. This arrangement may be made through his/her faculty adviser with the consent of a supervising faculty member.
Further Information:
Waseda Law School has an English-language web site specifically for prospective exchange students:
http://www.waseda.jp/law-school/eng/exchange.html
Waseda University's main web site (in English) is: http://www.waseda.jp/top/index-e.html
