The Supreme Court on Nov. 18 declared the 2019 Upper House election constitutional despite the disparity being as high as 3.00 in the number of voters per representation.

That amounts to endorsing the current system, in which a vote cast in one district is worth three votes cast in another, thereby trampling on the principle of equal vote value, a foundation of democratic government.

We can say the top court developed an argument that could hardly be called an argument in condoning the Diet’s inaction, thereby hurting the raison d’etre of the judiciary, of which it is part.

The only measure the Diet took to close the gap ahead of the 2019 election was to increase the number of seats, which was the simplest and easiest solution for the political parties and lawmakers concerned. Doing so, in addition, only narrowed the disparity by a minuscule margin.

The latest court decision pointed out, in fact, that no major progress had ever been made in addressing the issue.

But the reasons for the ruling, which followed that passage, are far from acceptable.

Two-prefecture electoral districts had been introduced in the previous Upper House election of 2016, each to combine a pair of modestly populated prefectural constituencies--Tottori and Shimane in one case and Tokushima and Kochi in the other.

The Supreme Court took a positive view of the fact that the combined districts were maintained despite opposition.

“There is no way to assert that a willingness to seek to close the disparity was lost,” the top court said in explaining why it concluded the 2019 election was constitutional.

We are left to wonder whom the court was looking to.

We could only assume the Supreme Court forgot the mission imposed on the judiciary branch of government, which is about checking the behavior of the legislative branch to defend the rights of the people, and catered to politicians instead. Its latest decision deserves harsh criticism.

One fact clearly shows the Diet has nothing like a “willingness to seek to close” the disparity.

When the Public Offices Election Law was amended to add more seats to the Upper House, the Diet eliminated a passage in a supplementary provision to the law that said, “There should be continued discussions on a fundamental review (of the electoral system) in the run-up to the next Upper House election, and a conclusion should be reached without fail.”

That passage was replaced with a vague statement saying, “There should be continued discussions in line with the objectives of the Constitution,” which was downgraded, in addition, to a legally nonbinding supplementary resolution.

When the Supreme Court ruled on the 2016 Upper House election, it said the supplementary provision, which had yet to be deleted, showed a “determination of the legislative branch” and called the election constitutional, partly out of expectations for efforts to be made in the future.

The top court would not have rendered the decision it did on Nov. 18 had it honestly assessed the subsequent fate of the supplementary provision, to which it had given the high marks.

Justice Keiichi Hayashi, one of three dissenters, criticized the majority opinion by saying, “It could be taken as endorsing the disparity of approximately 3:1 by making it a ‘rock-bottom price’ of sorts.”

The argument of the former diplomat, who was also unrelenting in pointing out the inaction of the legislative branch, sounds far more convincing.

There are concerns the Diet could avail itself of the constitutionality decision and choose to do nothing to fix the disparity.

Combining prefectures into a single district has its own limits and harmful effects, so proposals have been floated, for example, to introduce a regional bloc system. Little headway, however, has been made in that direction because of entangled interests and intentions of different political parties.

The Diet should stop trying to defend the existing seats, which it sees as vested interests of sorts, and work to change the electoral system into one that better reflects the popular will.

 --The Asahi Shimbun, Nov. 19