| 74 law schools recently opened for the first time in Japan's history. This project analyzes (1) why the law school system was established and (2) organizational responses to the law school system across public/private and elite/non-elite schools, based on archival data and in-depth interviews.;The establishment of a law school system served many players' interest. Law professors saw increasing influence of prep schools as a problem. Furthermore, law professors in elite universities viewed the presence of a large numbers of lower status universities as a threat to the prestige of their profession. They predicted only elite universities could establish a law school if rigorous requirements were introduced. Non-elite universities would then die out. As soon as some professors initiated a law school proposal, the Ministry of Education jumped at the opportunity. The ministry viewed the proposal as an ideal project for their plan to shift an emphasis from undergraduate to graduate professional education. Meantime, power holders (the Supreme Court, the Ministry of Justice, and the Bar Associations) found creating a new institution (law schools) an effective way in which they could avoid substantial changes in their institutions.;The Japanese law school system represents conformity among different status law schools. In spite of their quest for niche specialization, due to the strict law school standards and a fear of being illegitimate, non-elite schools are not successful in differentiating themselves from elite schools. Elite schools are, on the other hand, successful in exerting power to enforce conformity among law schools. Elite schools see non-elite law schools trying to compose their own identities and niche specialization as a threat to the prestige of the entire law school system. Elite schools thus manipulate the law school standards and the evaluation process so as to prohibit non-elite schools from creating their niche specialization. Insufficient resource partitioning is another cause for conformity. In short, the degree of manipulation of the institutional environments by powerful organizations and the degree of resource partitioning in are key indicators of the degree of isomorphism. |
