NEW YORK -- My U.S.-Japanese business consultant friend John Gillespie dropped by and, upon hearing that my wife Nancy had been summoned to jury duty, said Japan should introduce a similar system.

At the time, the Lewis "Scooter" Libby case -- about whether the former chief of staff of U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney had lied about his role in revealing the identity of a CIA officer -- was being deliberated by a jury. My immediate reaction to Gillespie's suggestion was skeptical. Let me explain.

Before I left Japan in the late 1960s, there were, as far as I was aware as an ordinary citizen, two major complaints about the Japanese judicial system: slowness and political bias.