In 1991 School of Law celebrated its 40th anniversary.Budget, raised by graduates of the School and the local business community, established an Asian Pacific Fund to promote projects relating to Asia- Pacific law and politics. These projects challenged our faculty to tackle the new project of “Legal Assistance for Asian countries” in 1998. To create a foundation for this project, on 1 April 2000, the School of Law established the Center for Asian Legal Exchange (CALE).

Thanks to the generous donations by alumni and businesses in the Chubu area with the 50th anniversary of our School, construction of CALE completed in March 2001. The purpose of CALE is to promote international cooperation in projects and research on Asian law and politics, as well to serve as a nucleus for the gathering and distributing of information relating to Asian legal and political systems.

Graduate School of Law and CALE have developed the project for the “Long-term education of legal specialists proficient in Japanese” through the establishment of the Nagoya University Research and Education Center for Japanese Law (CJL) in the five overseas partner universities. In these CJLs around 25 undergraduate students enrolled in each partner university are selected and taught Japanese to reach Level 1 or 2 in the Japanese Proficiency Test by the time they graduate.

CJL also offers the courses to learn Japanese law through the Japanese language. CJL aims to train continuously and systematically, specialists who can understand Japanese law in Japanese.

Graduate oriented collaborative research is expected after the CJL completion, as well as continuing research support on a various career stage to maintain academic network with Nagoya University.

On 11 March 2016, CALE has moved to its new home in the Asian Legal Exchange Plaza (ALEP). Through its more than twenty years of work and activities in collaboration with the Graduate School of Law (GSL) in the area of legal assistance in Asia, GSL and CALE have earned an excellent reputation as leaders in this field, an achievement which has been recognized by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXTThanks to the support of MEXT and donations from the private sector, CALE has moved its base of operations to a brand-new purpose-built facility. The Asian Legal Exchange Plaza is hoped to develop into a center of intellectual life for GSL’s large numbers of international students, and the steady stream of visiting academics from around the world. The Plaza, equipped with world-class conference facilities, can host international symposiums and conferences with up to 200 guests. Besides, the Plaza has multiple rooms that are fitted out with the latest audio-visual and video conference equipment.

These facilities can help CALE function as an educational hub for the Centers for Japanese Law (CJLs) and our School as an academic hub for Asian legal networking connecting the graduates of our School and the academia and scholars worldwide.