The Supreme Court and Adat Inheritance Law in Indonesia

Abstract

The turbulence of post-revolutionary history in Indonesia has not permitted national leaders much time for the more humdrum work of legal reform. Indonesia's legal system remains structurally much as it was before Dutch colonialism in the archipelago came to an end. But the structure of a legal system takes on the significance that people give to it, and Indonesia's legal system is now operated by Indonesians, not Dutchmen. This has been particularly important for Indonesian customary (adat) law, which is more susceptible to the changing ideals and imagination of the country's elite than the written codes. In the absence of legislative action, the ideals and goals of the post-revolutionary elite have been brought to bear on adat law by judges, primarily the judges of the Supreme Court. For this to happen, certain changes have been necessary in the conceptions Indonesian judges have of their own role in adat law. This article is concerned with the influence of these two developments on adat inheritance case law. Indonesia's pre-war legal and judicial systems were pluralistic, with separate civil law and courts for the colony's distinct racial groups: Europeans, Indonesians, Chinese and other non-Indonesian Asians. The plural court system disappeared during the Japanese occupation (1942-1945), and only one law of procedure was retained after the Revolution began in 1945, but otherwise plural civil law has continued. For Europeans there are civil and commercial codes, which also apply in varying measures to Chinese, Christian Indonesians, and others who have assimilated, in whole or in part, to European legal status. The civil law behavior of most Indonesians is governed by adat law. In order to understand the position of adat law in Indonesia, and the relationship of judges to it, it is necessary to know something about its pre-war history. A few salient features of the colonial legal system are discussed in the next few pages, before going on to the post-revolutionary position of adat law and recent inheritance decisions.