Request for review

A request to an administrative agency (行政庁) to review a disposition (処分) the person objects to, or, where the person applied for a disposition under a law or regulation and a reasonable time has passed with none made, the agency's failure to act (不作為) (Administrative Complaint Review Act, Articles 2 and 3). Unless an Act, or for a disposition based on a local ordinance (条例) that ordinance, provides otherwise, it is made to the agency that made the disposition or failed to act where that agency has no superior agency or is itself the competent minister (主任の大臣) or the head of certain agencies; where such a minister or head is the agency above it, to that minister or head; and otherwise to its highest superior agency (Article 4). Another Act can set rules of its own for it, naming another body to make it to or another route (Article 1, paragraph (2); Article 4): the Employees' Pension Insurance Act, for instance, has a request about a disposition (処分) of the Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare (厚生労働大臣) on a person's status as insured, standard remuneration or insurance benefits, other than a decision on a request to correct the pension insurance register, made to a social insurance examiner (社会保険審査官), and disapplies most of the Administrative Complaint Review Act's rules for it (Employees' Pension Insurance Act, Articles 90, paragraph (1), and 91-2). Under the Administrative Complaint Review Act, a request about a disposition must be made within three months of the day after the person learned of it — or one month after learning of the decision, where a request for re-investigation (再調査の請求) was made first — and within a year of the disposition or that decision, unless there is a justifiable reason (Administrative Complaint Review Act, Article 18, paragraphs (1) and (2)). Making one does not by itself stop the disposition taking effect or being carried out, or the proceedings going on (Article 25, paragraph (1)), but the agency reviewing it can suspend them in whole or in part on the application of the person who made the request — and, where it made the disposition or is the agency above the one that did, of its own motion — and, once the person who made the request has applied, must where that is urgently needed to avoid serious harm, unless that would seriously affect the public welfare or the request appears to have no grounds (Article 25, paragraphs (2) to (4)). The agency reviewing it (審査庁) decides it by a determination (裁決): it dismisses a request that is unlawful, for instance one made too late, rejects one that is groundless, and, where one is well founded, revokes the disposition in whole or in part or changes it — though never to the disadvantage of the person who made the request, and an agency that neither made the disposition nor is above the agency that did cannot change it (Articles 45, paragraphs (1) and (2), 46, paragraph (1), and 48). Where the request is about a de facto act (事実上の行為), the determination instead declares the act unlawful or unjust and orders it abolished in whole or in part or changed, or abolishes or changes it (Article 47). A well-founded request about a failure to act ends instead in a determination declaring the failure unlawful or unjust, and, where the agency finds a disposition should be made, an order to make it or the disposition itself (Article 49, paragraph (3)). Where revoking an unlawful or unjust disposition, or abolishing an unlawful or unjust de facto act, would seriously harm the public interest, the agency can reject the request while declaring in the determination that it is unlawful or unjust (Article 45, paragraph (3)). The determination takes effect when it is served on the person who made the request — or, where someone other than the disposition's addressee made it and the determination revokes or changes the disposition or deals with a de facto act, once it is served on the addressee too — and binds the agencies concerned (Articles 51, paragraph (1), and 52, paragraph (1)).