Professor Martin's Global Activities

Professor Craig Martin's summer started with the publishing of two articles: "Time to Kill the Term 'Officer-Involved Shooting'" appeared in the Huffington Post on May 26 and "Media Should Stop Legitimizing Abe's Article 9 'Reinterpretation'" was in The Japan Times on June 13. 

Martin was quoted by the Washington Post in "Japan's Push to Revise Its Constitution Isn't a Bid to Deny History, Abe Ally Says." He is a recognized expert in Japan’s constitution, having spent close to four years in Japan on a Monbushō Scholarship, studying Japanese and pubic law, and conducting research on conflicts between Japan and the U.S. over Japan’s international legal interests in Manchuria in the 1920s.  

In May, Martin traveled to Seattle and presented "Informal Amendment and Japan's Constitutional Reinterpretation" at the Law and Society Association (LSA) Conference. The LSA is an interdisciplinary scholarly organization committed to social scientific, interpretive, and historical analyses of law across multiple social contexts. In August, Martin traveled to Japan to chair a panel and presented the “Informal Amendment” paper at the Fourth East Asian Law and Society Conference at Waseda Law School, Waseda University, in Tokyo.

On August 7, Martin started teaching a week-long intensive course "Introduction to Anglo-American Law: Constitution" at the Osaka University Graduate School of Law and Politics. He has taught this course for several years. Martin also taught a two-day course on Article 9 of Japan's Constitution (the war-renouncing provision) at Osaka University's Cross-Border Innovation Institute, a cross-disciplinary institute for selected graduate students from various faculties.

In August, Martin was interviewed by AERA, a weekly news magazine in Japan, on the issue of the Japanese government’s efforts to reinterpret the constitution and on the prime minister's revisionist take on history.