About the WINGS-ABLP
The World-leading Innovative Graduate Study: Advanced Business Law Program (WINGS-ABLP) was established by the University of Tokyo in 2017 and is administered by the Graduate Schools for Law and Politics. The project contributes to the UTokyo Future Society Initiative. The program has also been selected by the Ministry of Education as a WISE Program (Doctoral Program for World-leading Innovative & Smart Education).
The program provides master and doctoral candidates with the opportunity to combine in-depth research with practical know-how in the rapidly evolving field of business law.
Coping with various business challenges
The Fourth Industrial Revolution represented by AI, IoT and big data, and innovations such as biotechnologies, have raised various new problems and concerns of business. Conventional education, which has been divided into different academic disciplines, fails to address these issues. First, to understand the essence of innovation, knowledge of the sciences is necessary, meanwhile, to institutionally solve these business problems, knowledge of social sciences is required. Thus, it is necessary to collaborate across disciplinary borders of the sciences and social sciences. Second, since the academic fields of law, economics, and politics each have their own limitations in addressing these issues exclusively and separately, there is also a necessity for integration of study fields within social sciences.
Even with the need of interdisciplinary fusions, problems occurring in the actual society are intricately intertwined, it is almost impossible to develop and propose perfect solutions to these complex problems from scratch. For example, in considering whether to grant patent protection on the discovery about the function of new gene segment, it is difficult to clearly determine which approach is better: to grant the patent in order to promote innovation by rewarding the scientific finding, or not to grant the patent because this discovery is basic research so as to encourage the development of subsequent innovation. Even though the determination is difficult, this problem can be legally reviewed. It could be understood with a conventional issue of granting pharmaceutical patent to chemical substance, which requires to consider whether chemical substance has comparable pharmacological effects. Taking the problem mentioned above as a question concerning the existence of effects, if the function of the new gene segment can be evaluated as having pharmacological effects, patent can be granted as a tentative solution to the problem. Meanwhile, law can justify it on an equal basis with other existing patented inventions, verify whether there are ethical issues from the perspective of justice.
Producing the elites
This program provides the Basic Seminar for master’s students and the Progress Seminar for doctoral students as compulsory subjects in order to reflect the aforementioned interdisciplinary fusion with a focus on law in the educational program. Aiming at fostering interdisciplinary synergy effects, the program assembles students and professors specializing in natural science, economics, politics and law. This program will guide students to learn specific research methods of law where trial-and-error could be used as a possible approach, and enlighten students with values such as freedom, equality, and justice that inherent in law.
We expect that students who have completed this program will flourish as elite practitioners,researchers, and policy planners to lead industry,government, and academia in the fields of business law.
DATA
［Program Coordinator］TAMURA Yoshiyuki (Professor, Graduate Schools for Law and Politics, The University of Tokyo) / Profile・Books
［Fields of diplomas］ Doctor of Laws, Doctor of Engineering, Doctor of Philosophy in the field of Information Science and Technology, Doctor of Medical Science,Doctor of Philosophy in Management, Doctor of Philosophy in the field of public policy.
［WISE Cooperating Institutions］ 5 universities, 10 enterprises, 1 public research institute：Harvard Law School / Peking University / Seoul National University / National Taiwan University / University of Strasbourg /Hitachi, Ltd. / FUJIFILM Corp. / SoftBank Corp. / Yahoo Japan Corp. / Nippon Life Insurance Co. /Intellectual Property Department, Takeda Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., /Google Japan G.K. / Westlaw Japan K.K. /Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies, Bank of Japan / The Asahi Shimbun Co. / East Japan Railway Co./
［Access］The World-leading Innovative Graduate Study: Advanced Business Law Program
The University of Tokyo Graduate Schools for Law and Politics
7-3-1 Hongo Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033 Japan
［E-mail］ ablp ＊ j.u-tokyo.ac (dot) jp / Advanced Business Law Program Office