ABSTRACT
Though Japan’s Supreme Court is extreme in the lack of laws that it has overturned on constitutional grounds, critics of the Court are wrong when they conclude that the Court has failed to rein in the problem of election districts of unequal sizes in Japan. The Court’s moderate role in allowing the political process to continue operating as long as it is within broad constitutional guidelines given by the Court is an example to the US judiciary which often intervenes too quickly in difficult political matters. Court interventions in such matters lack flexibility and the ability to compromise, features that are characteristic of political decision making, and the limited interventions of the Japanese Supreme Court in election district issues shows an awareness that these positive features of the political process need to be preserved in at least some political issue areas.
