Law and Society Association
Panel 2018
Panel Title: The Politics of
Courts and Legal Culture: Indonesia’s Judiciary and the Legacy of Dan S Lev
This panel presents a series of
related papers around the broader theme of legal culture and the role and function
of courts in Indonesia. Twenty years on from Indonesia’s democratic transition,
and there has not yet been a thoroughly analysis of how and why Indonesia’s
courts have changed, and what this says about the contested concept of legal
culture today. A true pioneer in this area is the late Professor Dan S Lev. His
work was grounded in a socio-legal approach to the study of law, and his work
spans an impressive range of themes related to courts, judges, lawyers and
politics in Indonesia from the 1960s to 2000s. The three papers in this panel
seek to reinvigorate and affirm the importance of Lev’s work for the study of
courts in Indonesia today. Offering new and empirically informed perspectives
on important developments in the courts, this panel seeks to bring the study of
Indonesian courts into the broader view of literature and debates on the
politics of courts.
Chair: Professor
Frank Munger, New York Law School
Paper 1: Judges, Courts
and Legal Culture in Indonesia: The Legacy of Dan S Lev
Author: Dr Melissa Crouch is a Senior Lecturer at the Law
Faculty, the University of New South Wales, Sydney. Her research
contributes to the field of Asian Legal Studies, with a concentration on Law
and Development; Constitutional Change; and Law and Religion. Her research has
a particular focus on Indonesia and Southeast Asia, where she has conducted
extensive socio-legal field research. Melissa is the author of Law
and Religion in Indonesia: Conflict and the Courts in West Java (Routledge, 2014). She is the editor of The Business of Transition (Cambridge University Press, 2017); 'Islam and the State in Myanmar' (Oxford University Press,
2016); and Law, Society and Transition in Myanmar (2014, Hart Publishing). Melissa has published in a range of
peer-reviewed journals, including International
Journal of Constitutional Law, Sydney Law Review and Asian Legal Studies.
Paper 2: The District Courts in Indonesia
Abstract: This chapter
is divided into two parts: first, an introductory section describing the civil
and criminal jurisdiction, procedural framework, judicial personnel and legal
development of Indonesia’s District Courts (Pengadilan
Negeri) since the fall of Suharto in 1998.
The chapter’s second part will comprise an empirical study of the
determinants of sentence severity in murder cases in Jakarta’s District
Courts. Indonesia is a civil law
jurisdiction within which trial judges are afforded an exceedingly wide
sentencing discretion in murder cases.
It is commonly assumed that sentences in Indonesian murder cases are
more severe, extending to the death penalty, when the case involves sadistic
and unnatural acts, a repeat offender, multiple victims, public opprobrium, or
separatist motivation (Haryoso, 1997).
This chapter’s case study, based on online case law data collection from
Jakarta’s four District Courts (Central, East, South and West), together with
interviews with several judges from those institutions to be conducted in
February 2018, aims to ascertain the determinants of sentencing severity in
post-1998 Jakarta murder cases, to confirm or deny existing assumptions about
the operative criteria, and within the broader aims of the edited volume, to
determine what District Court sentencing patterns reveal about Indonesia’s
broader judicial culture.
Author: Dr Daniel Pascoe is an Assistant Professor at the School of
Law, City University of Hong Kong. He
received his undergraduate degrees in Law and in Asian Studies (Indonesian)
from the Australian National University, and his Master of Philosophy in
Criminology and Criminal Justice and Doctor of Philosophy in Law degrees from
the University of Oxford, where he was the Keith Murray Graduate Scholar at
Lincoln College. Daniel has published on
crime and punishment in a number of Southeast Asian jurisdictions, including Indonesia. His first monograph, entitled ‘Last Chance
for Clemency: Clemency in Southeast Asian Death Penalty Cases’ is forthcoming
with Oxford University Press.
Paper 3: Indonesia’s
Industrial Relations Courts
Abstract: How should we
approach the study of the various special courts that have proliferated in
Indonesia since the fall of the New Order? In particular, can we see the new
special industrial relations courts as successfully having judicialized labor
rights? Building on a thorough examination of their historical antecedents,
legal origins and structure, this article focuses on a careful review of cases
brought before the industrial relations court. This chapter provides a critical
reflection and assessment of labor rights protection and litigation in
Indonesia today.
Author: Dr William
Hurst works on labor politics, contentious politics, political economy, and
the politics of law and legal institutions, principally in China and
Indonesia. He is currently completing a book manuscript on the comparative
politics of law and legal institutions in China and Indonesia since 1949.
For this work he has completed more than one year of fieldwork in each country
since 2006. Before coming to Northwestern in 2013, he was a postdoctoral fellow
at Oxford and an assistant professor at the Universities of Texas and Toronto.
He is an active participant in the department’s strength areas on Asian
Politics and Law & Politics.
Paper 4: Legal
institutions as an approach: the theoretical importance of Dan Lev’s work
Dan Lev is mainly remembered as an inspiring Indonesianist,
a member of the legendary Cornell-group established by George McTurnan Kahin in
the 1950s. Outside of Indonesianist
circles his name is not often mentioned and his work seldom referenced. Yet, the
approach Lev used to look at the Indonesian legal system has all the
characteristics of a law and society scholarship that is universally applicable
and that deserves to be more widely recognised. This paper explores these
characteristics of Lev’s work, locates them in the broader field of law and
society approaches developed by his contemporaries, and critically discusses
what their use is. It will argue that the main reason for the relative
ignorance of Lev’s work is the fact that he never articulated his approach very
explicitly, that he thought of himself primarily as a political scientist, and,
in the end, that he was happy to be an Indonesianist.
Bio: Adriaan
Bedner is KITLV Professor of Law & Society in Indonesia at the Van
Vollenhoven Institute for Law, Governance and Society, Leiden University. His
research has a particular focus on access to justice, dispute resolution and
the judiciary. This has led to publications on a wide variety of subjects,
ranging from administrative courts and environmental litigation to human rights
promotion in marriage law regimes and Indonesian legal education.
