UNAIR NEWS – UNAIR Faculty of Law students have made another international achievement. The talented students are Stefania Arshanty Felicia, Harven Filippo Taufik, and Rahajeng Dzakiyya Ikbar, who participated at the 2nd Asian Legal History Conference held by the Faculty of Law Thammasat University, Centre for Asian Legal Studies, and the National University of Singapore (NUS) Faculty of Law on July 23 to 24, 2022.
They wrote a scientific abstract on legal pluralism in Indonesia titled The Netherlands’ Colonialism Influence Toward Legal Pluralism in Indonesia’s Civil Procedural Law: A Historical Analysis and presented the result in the forum.
“We explored the theme after seeing the current legal system in Indonesia. There is a legal pluralism that shows some applied legal systems. According to historical perspective, the Dutch Colonialism in Indonesia highly influenced the legal pluralism,” said Stefania.
The influences can be particularly found in the civil procedural law. The existing legal pluralism is seen in the civil procedural law sources, such as HIR, RBg, BW and Rv.
Historical approach
Stefania, representing the team, explained that it is interesting that the international legal conference explores the topic using a historical approach. It was also realized that legal research based on the historical approach is not quite common.
“This research found that legal pluralism in the current civil procedural law remains applied due to the provisions of the Transitional Rules in the 1945 Constitution,” she added.
The abstract explained that initially, the legal pluralism was distinguished based on the classification of the population in the Indische Staatsregeling. It also contains a comparative analysis on HIR, RBg, Rv, and BW and expert opinion and jurisprudence reviews on the applicability of the provisions of civil procedural law.
Legal unification
“Hopefully, the research will contribute to the possibility of unification of civil procedural law just like the criminal procedural law,” Stefania hoped.
However, the discussion with the legal experts, Andrew Harding from the NUS Law and Christopher Roberts from CUHK Law as the panelists, revealed that the unification of civil procedural law highly depends on the material law, which is also plural, such as customary law, Islamic law, and western law or BW.
Author: Tristania Faisa Adam
Editor: Binti Q Masruroh
