Between the Western and non-Western: reorganization of constitutional law on UESUGI Shinkichi

2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 15K12969
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Public law
• Research Institution: University of Yamanashi
• Principal Investigator: MORIMOTO Taku 山梨大学, 大学院総合研究部, 准教授 (50374179)
• Project Period (FY): 2015-04-01 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: 上杉慎吉 / 美濃部達吉 / 天皇機関説論争 / 天皇機関説事件 / 天皇主権説 / 国体憲法学派

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Evaluation of constitutional theory of Uesugi Shinkichi is extremely low. It is a standard evaluation by the academic community that it is not worth considering in the first place (especially compare with that of Minobe Tatsukichi), as it affirmed militarism / emperor absoluteism rule. However, Uesugi's legal theory is based on Western law ideas such as Plato, Hegel, Rousseau and it is hard to say that conventional research has been adequately followed on this point.
Therefore, in this research, I tried to reevaluate and restructure constitutional theory of Uesugi, taking his ideological background into consideration. In addition, we conducted a comparison study with other public law scholars in the prewar period.

Free Research Field

法思想史・法哲学