Professor allegedly leaks bar exam questions, prompts criminal probe
The bar exam committee of the Justice Ministry filed a criminal complaint against Koichi Aoyagi on Tuesday for a possible violation of the confidentiality provision in the national civil service law, leading to the 67-year-old being dismissed as a committee member tasked with preparing the bar exam, according to the ministry. The ministry said Aoyagi leaked questions on the subject of the Constitution to a female student in her 20s for this year's exam held in May. The two have admitted to the allegation during the ministry's questioning, it said. The case came to light just before the Tuesday announcement of the exam results. The student was among the 8,016 people who took the exam, but the ministry decided to remove her from grading. She is the only person who received the leaked information, from Aoyagi, the ministry said. She will be barred from taking the same exam for five years. "It is truly regrettable," Justice Minister Yoko Kamikawa said at a press conference. "We take this seriously and will set up a working team to get to the bottom of this." The ministry said another exam committee member, whose field is the Constitution, brought the possible leak to its attention, saying the student could not have formed the answers she did without a certain amount of leaked information. Appointed by the minister, Aoyagi was one of 130 part-time government officials in charge of preparing questions and grading for this year's examination. A constitutional scholar who has written a number of books and papers, Aoyagi is one of the star professors at the university's Graduate School of Law and had served as a member of the ministry's bar exam committee since 2002, according to people who know him. Last year, a total of 365 students from the university's law school took the national examination, with 63 of them passing. The passing rate was 17.26 percent, lower than the overall rate of 22.58 percent. In 2007, a then Keio University professor involved in preparation of bar exam questions was found to have lectured to his students on subjects similar to those chosen for the national test. The incident led to reform of the test preparation process, barring question-preparing professors from teaching their students for certain periods. Source: Kyodo
