Megapolitical Cases before the Constitutional Court of Indonesia since 2004: An Empirical Study
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31078/consrev421Keywords:
Constitutional Court, Judges, Judicial Behaviour, Indonesia, Megapolitical CasesAbstract
The Constitutional Court of Indonesia is considered one of Asia’s most activist courts. Here we investigate empirically possible determinants of the decisions of its judges over the period 2003–18. The findings are based on a unique data set of 80 high-profile political cases, complemented by data on the socio-biographic profiles of 26 judges who served during that period. Testing for common perceptions of the Constitutional Court since its inception, we first describe patterns in judicial decision-making across time and court composition before testing specifically for the impact of the judges’ professional backgrounds, presidential administrations, the influence of the Chief Justice, and cohort behaviour. The analysis finds declining dissent among justices on the bench over time and also provides evidence of strategic behaviour of justices at the ending of their own terms. But there is little statistical evidence that judicial behaviour has been affected by work background (except for those coming from the executive branch), appointment track or generation – hence suggesting that justices seem to retain more independence than the public seems to perceive. We then discuss the results in the context of Indonesia’s evolving constitutional democracy and look at the implications for comparative studies of judicial behaviour.References
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Spiller, Pablo, and Rafael Gely. “Strategic Judicial Decision-Making.” In The Oxford Handbook of Law and Politics, edited by Keith E. Whittington, Daniel R. Kelemen and Gregory A. Caldeira. 35-43. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Siregar, Fritz. “The Political Context of Judicial Review in Indonesia.” Indonesia Law Review 2 (2015): 208-37.
Stockmann, Petra. The New Indonesian Constitutional Court: A Study into Its Begining and First Years of Work. Jakarta: Hanns Seidel Foundation, 2007.
Tate, Neal C., and Torbjörn Vallinder, eds. The Global Expansion of Judicial Power. New York: New York University Press, 1995.
Baum, Lawrence. Judges and Their Audiences: A Perspective on Judicial Behavior. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006.
———. “What Judges: Judges’ Goals and Judicial Behavior.” Political Research Quarterly 47, no. 3 (1994): 749-68.
Bisariyadi. “The Application of Legal Construction in the Rulings of the Constitutional Court.” MIMBAR HUKUM 29, no. 1 (2017): 135-49.
———. “A Typical Rulings of the Indonesian Constitutional Court.” Hasanuddin Law Review 2, no. 2 (2016): 225-40.
Butt, Simon. “The Constitutional Court’s Decision in the Dispute between the Supreme Court and the Judicial Commission: Banishing Judicial Accountability?”. In Indonesia Democracy and the Promise of Good Governance, edited by Ross H. McLeod and Andrew MacIntyre. 178-99. Singapore: Instititute of South East Asian Studies, 2007.
———. The Constitutional Court and Democracy in Indonesia. Leiden: Brill Nijhoff, 2015.
———. “Indonesia’s Constitutional Court: A Reform over-Achiever?”. Inside Indonesia 87, no. July-September (2006): 10-11.
———. “Indonesia’s Constitutional Court: Conservative Activist or Strategic Operator?”. In The Judicialization of Politics in Asia, edited by Björn Dressel. Abingdon; New York: Routledge, 2012.
———. “Indonesian Constitutional Court Decisions in Regional Head Electoral Disputes.” CDI Policy Papers on Political Governance., Australian National University, 1-37, 2013.
Curley, Melissa, Björn Dressel, and Stephen McCarthy. “Competing Visions of the Rule of Law in Southeast Asia: Power, Rhetoric and Governance.” Asian Studies Review 42, no. 2 (2018/04/03 2018): 192-209.
Desierto, Desiree A. “Judicial Independence: Evidence from the Philippine Supreme Court (1970-2003).” In The Political Economy of Governance, edited by Norman Schofield and Gonzalo Caballero. 41-57. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2015.
Dressel, Björn. “Governance, Courts and Politics in Asia.” Journal of Contemporary Asia 44, no. 2 (2014/04/03 2014): 259-78.
———. “The Informal Dimension of Constitutional Politics in Asia: Insights from the Philippines and Indonesia.” In Constitutional Courts in Asia, edited by Albert H.Y. Chen and Andrew Harding. 60-86. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press., 2018.
———. The Judicialization of Politics in Asia. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2012.
Dressel, Björn, and Tomoo Inoue. “Informal Networks and Judicial Decisions: Insights from the Philippines Supreme Court, 1986-2015.” International Political Science Review\.
Dressel, Björn, Raul Sanchez Urribarri, and Alexander Stroh. “Courts and Informal Networks: Towards a Relational Perspective on Judicial Politics Beyond Western Democracies.” International Political Science Review 39, no. 5 (2018): 573-584.
———. “The Informal Dimension of Judicial Politics: A Relational Perspective.”Annual Review of Law and Social Science 13 (2017): 413-30.
Dressel, Björn, and Khemthong Tonsakulrungruang. “Coloured Judgement? The Work of the Thai Constitutional Court, 1998–2016.” Journal of Contemporary Asia early print (13 June 2018).
Epstein, Lee, and Jack Knight. The Choices Justices Make. Washington, DC: CQ Press, 1998.
Faiz, Pan Mohamad. “A Critical Analysis of Judicial Appointment Process and Tenure of Constitutional Justice in Indonesia.” Hasanuddin Law Review 2, no. 2 (2016): 152-68.
Hendrianto. “Institutional Choice and the New Indonesian Constitutional Court.” In New Courts in Asia, edited by Andrew Harding and Penelope Nicholson, 158-77. Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2010.
Hendrianto, Stefanus. “Convergence or Borrowing: Standing in the Indonesian Constitutional Court.” Constitutional Review 1, no. 1 (2015).
———. “The Indonesian Constitutional Court and the Crisis of the 2019
Presidential Election.” In, I-CONnect Blog no. Sept. 19, 2018 (2018). http://www.iconnectblog.com/2018/09/the-indonesian-constitutional-court-andthe-crisis-of-the-2019-presidential-election/.
———. Law and Politics of Constitutional Courts: Indonesia and the Search for Judicial Heroes. New York: Routledge, 2018.
———. “The Rise and Fall of Heroic Chief Justices: Constitutional Politics and Judicial Leadership in Indonesia.” Washington International Law Journal 25, no. 3 (2016).
Hendrianto, Stefanus, and Fritz Siregar. “Developments in Indonesian Constitutional Law: The Year 2016 in Review.” In The I·Connect-Clough Center 2016 Global Review of Constitutional Law (August 3, 2017), edited by Richard Albert, David Landau, Pietro Faraguna and Simon Drugda. Boston: Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy, 2017.
Horowitz, Donald. Constitutional Change and Democracy in Indonesia. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Lev, Daniel S. “State and Law Reform in Indonesia.” In Law Reform in Developing and Transitional States, edited by Timothy Lindsey. 236-67. London and New York: Routledge, 2007.
Mietzner, Marcus. “Political Conflict and Democratic Consolidation in Indonesia: The Role of the Constitutional Court.” Journal of East Asian Studies 10, no. 3 (2010): 397-424.
Nardi, Dominic. “Demand-Side Constitutionalism: How Indonesian NGOs Set the Constitutional Court’s Agenda and Inform the Justices.” Centre for Indonesian Law , Islamic Society, Policy Paper., 2018.
Ramseyer, Mark J. “The Puzzling (in)Dependence of Courts: A Comparative Approach.” Journal of Legal Studies 23 (1994): 721-47.
Rios-Figuero, Julio, and Jeffrey K. Staton. “An Evaluation of Cross-National Measures of Judicial Independence.” The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organizations 30, no. 1 (2009): 104-37.
Roux, Theunis. “American Ideas Abroad: Comparatiove Implications of Us Supreme Court Decision-Making Models.” I Con 13, no. 1 (2015): 90-118.
———. The Politico-Legal Dynamics of Judicial Review: A Comparative Analysis.
Comparative Constitutional Law and Policy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. DOI: 10.1017/9781108340977.
Roux, Theunis, and Fritz Edward Siregar. “Trajectories of Curial Power: The Rise, Fall and Partial Rehabilitation of the Indonesian Constitutional Court.” Australian Journal of Asian Law 16, no. 2 (2016): 1-21.
Russel, Peter H. “Towards a General Theory of Judicial Independence.” In Judicial Independence in the Age of Democracy. Critical Perspectives from around the World, edited by Peter H. Russel and David M O’Brian. 1-24. Charlottsville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2001.
Segal, Jeffrey A., and Harold J. Spaeth. The Supreme Court and the Attitudinal Model. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
———. The Supreme Court and the Attitudinal Model Revisited. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Shapiro, Martin. Courts: A Comparative and Political Analysis. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1981.
Sieder, Rachel, Line Schjolden, and Alan Angell, eds. The Judicialization of Politics in Latin America. New York and Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
Spiller, Pablo, and Rafael Gely. “Strategic Judicial Decision-Making.” In The Oxford Handbook of Law and Politics, edited by Keith E. Whittington, Daniel R. Kelemen and Gregory A. Caldeira. 35-43. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Siregar, Fritz. “The Political Context of Judicial Review in Indonesia.” Indonesia Law Review 2 (2015): 208-37.
Stockmann, Petra. The New Indonesian Constitutional Court: A Study into Its Begining and First Years of Work. Jakarta: Hanns Seidel Foundation, 2007.
Tate, Neal C., and Torbjörn Vallinder, eds. The Global Expansion of Judicial Power. New York: New York University Press, 1995.
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Published
2018-12-31
How to Cite
Dressel, B., & Inoue, T. (2018). Megapolitical Cases before the Constitutional Court of Indonesia since 2004: An Empirical Study. Constitutional Review, 4(2), 157–187. https://doi.org/10.31078/consrev421
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