Legal Ideals: Lawmaking and Law Enforcement Primarily based on Community Social Life in Indonesia

Abstract

The aim of this study is to conceptualize how lawmaking and law enforcement work together to serve society’s best interests. Historically, law has primarily functioned as a tool for social control and is extremely inflexible, making it impossible to properly uphold the core principles of justice implementation and enforcement. Law should evolve to become a tool for fostering social development, leading to contentment and the establishment of a just societal order. As a result, legal development should prioritize the desires and needs of the people. This is a socio-legal study wherein social phenomena are interpreted as the direction of legal development. Employing a conceptual approach and analyzing qualitative data derived from a literature review, our findings indicate a shift in people’s desires, particularly in Indonesia, influenced by legal establishments. With the desire to contribute their aspirations into the creation of law and serve as the participatory society in monitoring the way law enforcement is carried out, the development of legal thinking within society is evolving in a positive direction. Legal development must change the paradigm that has previously considered law merely as a mechanism of social control, as a result of societal changes. Both lawmaking and law enforcement should embrace a participatory society. Thus, the goal is to translate this legal ideal into practice by establishing a legal development that benefits society.