Searching for laws
"Nihon Horei Sakuin" (Index to the Laws and Regulations of Japan)
We have so far looked at the various types of laws, and the tools for searching them. In order to make full use of such tools, it is important to know what kinds of information can be used as search keys. Examples of useful search keys include the name or content of a law statute, and its year of enactment.
Keeping this in mind, this knowledge will also allow you to make elective using the database found on the internet. We will now look at the website of "Nihon Horei Sakuin".
This is a web-searchable version of "Nihon Horei Sakuin", which we discussed in the section titled "Collections of repealed and expired statutes". "Nihon Horei Sakuin" provides information regarding all laws produced since 1886. Although the texts of laws are not given, the web version provides not only the history of each law, which is also printed in the book version, but also references to the deliberation process. The web version can be searched according to the formal names and enactment dates of laws by entering the abbreviated name of the law statutes or appropriable keywords.
Let's see how searches are actually performed.
Example: Searching for laws related to the soccer lottery.
- Statutes in legal force
- Repealed and expired laws
- Enacted Statutes
- Law bills
- Treaty ratification issues
Once the formal name and enactment date of a law statute have been obtained from "Nihon Horei Sakuin", the texts can be searched by using the tools that we have studied earlier.
