He was active in characterising the legal systems of the Japanese state, and his writings especially focused on the Meiji Constitution.

Hozumi entered University of Tokyo at the age of nineteen after studying English for six years because many professors were foreigners who lectured in their own language.

In 1889 Hozumi returned to Japan and gradually shifted away from legal positivism, but he did not reject his positivist heritage outright.

Within a very few years after his return, attacks from the left together with issues of interpretation of the Meiji constitution led him to seek in ancestor worship and the family state concept the true source of Japan's greatness.

Hence, these universalist beliefs led to the breakdown of the primordial social orders and separate law from morality.

This phenomenon would lead to the formation of more egalitarian kokutai where total obedience to the state was no longer seen as second nature.

Hozumi died in 1912 but his ideas about the Japanese state and the Meiji constitution remained the standard interpretation till 1945.