Autonomous vehicle (AV), or connected autonomous vehicle (CAV), is one of the hottest issues among Japanese policymakers these days. Given the importance of future mobility in an aging Japanese society and the enormous presence of the automobile industry in a declining Japanese economy, this phenomenon is pretty understandable.

To adopt the legal system to the new eco-system that will be brought about by AV (or CAV), the Japanese government starts to modify some crucial administrative law and regulations. But there may be a potential for conflict between the concept of infringement and risk among the debates surrounding these modifications. And they are most revealed in the criminal justice context, which preserves the most classical legal concepts of liability tightly connected to concrete past infringement. Originally molded in German criminal law, in order to properly manage their inevitable risk derived from its nature of programming, AV (or CAV) requires statistical risk-based approach in policy making. This is completely new for the Japanese criminal justice.

Faced with these challenges, some Japanese legal scholars and policymakers struggle to find a new path that enables healthy development of AV (or CAV) as well as sound risk management of future mobility. In this seminar, Professor Inatani will present and analyse these challenges and struggles and demonstrate emerging new trends of the legal-political field in Japan.

Tatsuhiko Inatani is an Associate Professor of Law at Kyoto University. His research interests focus on law and technology in corporate crime. He has published several influential books and articles concerned with privacy, artificial intelligence, and Deferred Prosecution Agreements. He was a visiting scholar at SciencesPo Paris and the University of Chicago.