The Invisible Constitution in Comparative Perspective



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The Invisible Constitution in Comparative Perspective by Rosalind Dixon (editor), Adrienne Stone (editor) (z-lib.org)

Iddo Porat

with or without an override clause), or the type of doctrine applied (e.g., tiers 

of scrutiny or proportionality). Some rights or institutional arrangements may 

be borderline cases. The doctrine of proportionality, for example, is viewed 

by some as part of the essence of constitutionalism, and as following logi-

cally from the idea of human rights, and hence as having left the realm of 

contingent doctrine and entered into what I would term the ideal Form of a 

constitution.

77

Second, one may ask how is it that the ideal Form of a constitution can 



be perceived by judges. After all, according to the Platonic analogy, the ideal 

Forms are imperceptible to the human eye, and only their manifestations as 

matter or object can be perceived. Similarly, how is it that judges can annul 

constitutional provisions or amendments (using such doctrines as unconsti-

tutional constitutional amendments), if such provisions are analogized to 

objects and Matter that cannot be erased from reality by an act of human will. 

As to the first question, judges may indeed acknowledge that they do not have 

direct access to the ideal constitution, or the ideal Form of human rights –  

they can only strive to approximate them, and get closer to them, and the 

different manifestations of constitutional texts worldwide are helping them 

in this project. Second, the idea of annulling a constitutional provision can 

be analogized to declaring a classification of an object as wrong. Viewing 

a provision in a constitution that deprives people of their basic rights, as a 

constitutional provision, would be like looking at a dog and saying that it is a 

cat. Some objects are so far from the ideal Form that they cannot be regarded 

as manifestations of it. While not all parts of the analogy fit exactly, I hope to 

have shown that it is close enough to be a useful and effective heuristic.

9.5. Conclusion

Israeli constitutional adjudication includes a very substantial amount of 

unwritten constitutional law. Indeed, most of the constitution in Israel can be 

said to be unwritten. Even the fact that it is a constitution and not a piece of 

regular legislation is unwritten. I have argued that this fact is the result of con-

tinuous attempts by the Supreme Court, and in particular by its most intellec-

tually influential Justice, Justice Aharon Barak, to bridge the gap between the 

ideal – having a full-fledged constitution with a full bill of rights, and reality –  

only a partial and fragmented text which is the beginning of a constitution. 

77 

See Robert Alexy, A Theory of Constitutional Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 



66 (Julian Rivers trans.) arguing that the doctrine of proportionality “logically follows” from 

the nature of rights as principles.




 

The Platonic Conception of the Israeli Constitution 

297


I have also argued that behind this project, that turned out to be phenome-

nally successful, lies a theory of constitutional interpretation which I called a 

Platonic conception of the constitutional text.

Is Israel only an extreme case of the Platonic conception of the text, or 

should it be regarded as qualitatively different than, let us say, German con-

stitutionalism which also shares some of the premises of the Platonic concep-

tion, or even the American constitution, of which great parts are unwritten? 

The answer is not clear. However, sometimes differences of degree become 

differences in kind. Courts have been known to engage in very loose methods 

of constitutional interpretations, but they at least were interpreting a constitu-



tion. In the case of Israel, the judicial act can only be described as an act of 

pure statesmanship on behalf of the Court – since it amounted to constitution 

building and creation, and not only interpretation.



298

Indonesia’s Constitutional Court was established in August 2003. It has nine 

judges, with three each appointed by the three arms of government – the 

national parliament, the Supreme Court and the president. Most of its judges 

have been law professors, former politicians and judges from other Indonesian 

courts, including the Supreme Court itself. Though it is not the first 

Indonesian judicial institution to have some form of judicial review power, the 

Court is the first to have exercised constitutional review. However, this power 

is limited. In particular, the Court can only determine whether legislation 

enacted by Indonesia’s national parliament complies with the Constitution. 

It lacks jurisdiction to review executive regulations or government action for 

constitutionality.

This chapter considers the handful of cases in which the Court has sought 

to ‘imply’ constitutional rights. In these cases, the Court has identified, and 

then applied, rights that it considers essential to the ‘rule of law’, as understood 

in Indonesia. Problematically, the Court has attempted to explain neither its 

approach to implying rights, nor precisely what the rule of law entails.

While implying rights raises the ire of legislatures and legal commenta-

tors in other countries, it has almost entirely escaped attention in Indonesia. 

Indeed, when the national legislature attempted to curb the Court’s powers in 

2011, in response to perceived judicial activism, it ignored these implied rights 

cases. Instead, the legislature sought to prohibit the Court exceeding its juris-

diction in other ways. Nevertheless, after an enthusiastic start during its earlier 

years, the Court’s rights implication appears to have slowed, if not ceased, in 

more recent years. The Court’s implied rights jurisprudence may well have 

already reached its zenith.

This chapter provides an account of the rise, and the apparent fall, of rights 

implication in Indonesia’s Constitutional Court. I begin by introducing the Court 

and its jurisdiction, before discussing the Court’s implied rights cases and the 

10

The Indonesian Constitutional Court

Implying Rights from the ‘Rule of Law’

Simon Butt




 


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