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| Hironobu Takesaki 竹崎博允 |
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| Hironobu Takesaki 竹崎博允 |
QUOTE 1:“As a judge of the court of last resort. I will strive to make a rational judgment while hearing opinions of the parties from a neutral and fair perspective and taking into consideration the course of history.”
QUOTE 2: “The law has its logical and scientific side, but we [judges] also face the problem of understanding human beings, which is why history interests me. Trying to understand any crime or incident without knowing the background is inconceivable to me. Every social phenomenon has to be seen in its historical context. History is fundamental.”
AUTHOR:Hironobu Takesaki (竹崎博允Takesaki Hironobuborn July 8, 1944) is a Japanese lawyer and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Japan. He is a graduate of the University of Tokyo Faculty of Law and of Columbia Law School. At age 64, Takesaki replaced Niro Shimada as the Chief Justice when November 21, 2008, the date of Shimada's mandatory retirement, came.
Takesaki is now at the apex of a judicial career that began in 1969. The western Japan native divides his time between his official residence in Tokyo and the city’s suburbs, where he spends every weekend with his wife and daughter. Despite a demanding schedule, he still makes time to cultivate English roses in his garden on weekends and, above all, to read. Takesaki counts works in the natural sciences, and especially history, among his favorites, and values them as much for the pleasure he gets from the subject matter as for the depth they give him as a jurist.
APPLICATION: Although these two quotes are not referring to the death penalty, I chose them because it is another example of safeguards in capital cases. The Chief Justice of Japan himself, wants to learn from history to research more, in order to understand the cases in deeper prospective.