The Supreme Court declared on Wednesday that the 2012 Lower House general election was "in a state of unconstitutionality" due to the large disparity in vote value among constituencies, but declined to nullify its outcome.
It was the first such ruling, based on nuanced Japanese phraseology that stops just shy of an outright declaration of unconstitutionality, by the top court since March 2011, when it found that the summer 2009 general election was identically flawed.
"Although the 2012 election was in a state of unconstitutionality in that it was violating the principle of vote-weight equality among constituencies, there is room to acknowledge that action was made to redress the disparities within a reasonable period of time frame," Chief Justice Hironobu Takesaki said, referring to the Diet's last-ditch attempt last November, a month before the election, to cut the number of single-seat constituencies in the Lower House to 295 from 300.