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)

The Indonesian Constitutional Court 

301


is particularly significant, because many of its cases involve the interests of the 

government, or government institutions, whether national, provincial, city or 

county. For many decades, government institutions have not had the exercise 

of their powers subjected to judicial scrutiny.

The Court has also been criticised for using inadequate or questionable 

legal reasoning to support some of its decisions. Critics have focused on the 

Court’s insufficient disclosure, in its decisions, of the legal reasoning or inter-

pretative methods it employs. These criticisms, however, have largely fallen 

on deaf ears, even within Indonesian legal and political communities. While 

lawyers and politicians often criticise the Court for the decisions it reaches, 

they rarely criticise the processes or principles the Court uses to arrive at 

those decisions. This is surprising. Some politicians are particularly forthright 

in their condemnation of the Court for invalidating legislation enacted by 

a democratically elected parliament, but they have let this ‘opportunity’ to 

criticise the Court pass by. Also, Indonesia’s legal community is particularly 

vibrant, and usually keeps a close eye on the Court and the way it operates. 

Given the need for lawyers to present arguments before the Court, one might 

expect that they would be interested in discovering how the Court chooses 

between those arguments. One explanation, explored later in this chapter, is 

that Indonesian politicians and lawyers alike understand neither what rights 

implication is nor what its consequences are.

I now turn to briefly outline the Court’s implied rights jurisprudence. As we 

will see, the primary constitutional basis upon which the Court has implied 

rights is Article 1(3) of the Constitution, which declares that Indonesia is a 



Negara Hukum – a country that observes ‘the rule of law’. What comprises the 

Negara Hukum has never been entirely clear and remains hotly contested in 

Indonesia today. Nevertheless, after initially providing little guidance on what 

the concept means in modern Indonesia, the Court has, more recently, begun 

providing clues about its key components.

10.2.  Implied Rights Cases

The Court began referring to the Negara Hukum concept and emphasised its 

importance in its earliest decisions. In Bali Bombing (2003), for example, the 

majority stated that

the essence of the Constitutional Court’s existence . . . to guard the 

Constitution and to uphold the principle of the supremacy of the law in the 

Indonesian state system after the Reformasi era . . . is nothing other than an 

effort to strengthen the realisation of the ideas of the Negara Hukum.

1



Constitutional Court Decision 013/PUU-I/2003, 46.




302 

Simon Butt

In subsequent cases the Court uncovered various rights that emanate 

 

from the Negara Hukum. These rights appear to include the right to legal  



aid, to due process, to a fair trial and to be presumed innocent until proven 

guilty. I now turn to outline key cases in which the Court has ‘discovered’ 

these rights.

10.2.1.  The Right to Legal Aid and Access to Justice

In the Advocates Law case (2004), the Court was asked to review the con-

stitutionality of provisions of the 2003 Advocates Law that prohibited those 

who were not formally qualified as advocates or lawyers from providing any 

form of legal services or advice.

2

 Those who did so faced criminal penalties of  



up to five years’ imprisonment and significant fines. This prohibition put in 

jeopardy the operation of many hundreds of legal aid clinics – most of which 

are housed in universities – run by students and staff who were not formally 

qualified as advocates. These clinics provided the primary, if not sole, means 

by which Indonesia’s poor accessed legal services. For the Court, depriving 

these citizens, and others, of legal assistance violated the Negara Hukum 

concept:

[T]he right to legal assistance, as a part of human rights, must be consid-

ered a constitutional right of citizens, even though the Constitution does not 

explicitly regulate or mention it. The state must, therefore, guarantee the 

fulfilment [of this right].

3

In this context, the prohibition caused injustice for those who needed legal 



services but could not afford to pay for them, and for those who lived in an 

area where there was a clinic but no practising advocates. For the Court, this 

further restricted or closed off the

community’s access to justice. Yet access to justice is an inseparable part of 

another feature of the Negara Hukum – that the law must be transparent and 

accessible to all, as is recognised in developments in modern thinking on 



Negara Hukum. If, for financial reasons, a citizen does not have this access, 

then it is the obligation of the state [to provide it], and it is truly also the 

 obligation of advocates to facilitate [that access] not to close it.

4



Constitutional Court Decision 006/PUU-II/2004.

Ibid.



, 29.

.



Ibid.

, 32.



 

The Indonesian Constitutional Court 

303


10.2.2.  Right to a Fair Trial?

In several cases, the Court has declared that the right to a fair trial is also 

required by the Negara Hukum.

5

 In the Bali Bombing case (2003), for exam-



ple, the Court reviewed a law purporting to allow a new terrorism law to be 

applied retrospectively to aid the investigation, prosecution and conviction 

of those involved in the Bali bombings in Kuta in 2002. In its decision, the 

majority explained that the right to a fair trial was an essential element of the 



Negara Hukum. The Court stated that procedural justice requires

the presumption of innocence; equality of opportunity for the parties; 

announcement of the decision open to the public; ne bis in idem [the double 

jeopardy rule]; the application of less serious laws for pending cases and the 

prohibition against retrospectivity . . . Law No 16 of 2003 . . . clearly breaches 

one requirement . . . that is, it applies the retrospectivity principle.

6

In the Advocates Law case, mentioned above, the Court also appeared to asso-



ciate the right to a fair trial with access to justice:

Article 31 is . . . excessive and . . . impedes . . . the community’s access to justice, 

which in turn, can prevent the fulfilment of the right to a fair trial, particu-

larly for those who are indigent. Article 31 is, therefore, contradictory to the 

ideal of the Negara Hukum, which is clearly formulated in Article 1(3) of the 

Constitution.

The Court then drew a parallel with the requirements of the ‘rule of law’:

As a comparison, access to justice in the context of fulfilling the right to a 

fair trial attaches to the ideal of the rule of law and, therefore, is considered 

a constitutional right. This constitutes the communis opinio [community of 

opinion], as is shown in the English court case of R v. Lord Chancellor ex p 

Witham (1998), in which it was stated ‘ ... the right to a fair trial, which of 


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