Critiquing the State-centric and legalistic approach to implementing human rights, this book illustrates the efficacy of relying upon social institutions.
Since the first edition, Indonesia has undergone massive political and legal change as part of its post-Soeharto reform process and its dramatic transition to democracy. This work contains 25 new chapters and the 4 surviving chapters have all been revised, where necessary. Indonesia: Law and Society now covers a broad range of legal fields and includes both historical and very up-to-date analyses and views on Indonesian legal issues. It includes work by leading scholars from a wide range of countries. There is still no comparable, English language text in existence.
Having articulated numerous human rights norms and standards in international treaties, the pressing challenge today is their realisation in States' parties around the world. Domestic implementation has proven a difficult task for national authorities as well as international supervisory bodies. This book examines the traditional State-centric and legalistic approach to implementation, critiquing its limited efficacy in practice and failure to connect with local cultures. The book therefore explores the permissibility of other measures of implementation, and advocates more culturally sensitive approaches involving social institutions. Through an interdisciplinary case study of Islam in Indonesia, the book demonstrates the power of social institutions like religion to promote rights compliant positions and behaviours. Like the preamble of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the book reiterates the role not just of the State but indeed 'every organ of society' in realising rights.
The popular 1998 reformasi movement that brought down President Suharto’s regime demanded an end to illegal practices by state officials, from human rights abuse to nepotistic investments. Yet today, such practices have proven more resistant to reform than people had hoped. Many have said corruption in Indonesia is "entrenched". We argue it is precisely this entrenched character that requires attention. What is state illegality entrenched in and how does it become entrenched? This involves studying actual cases. Our observations led us to rethink fundamental ideas about the nature of the state in Indonesia, especially regarding its socially embedded character. We conclude that illegal practices by state officials are not just aberrations to the state, they are the state. Almost invariably, illegality occurs as part of collective, patterned, organized and collaborative acts, linked to the competition for political power and access to state resources. While obviously excluding many without connections, corrupt behaviour also plays integrative and stabilizing functions. Especially at the lower end of the social ladder, it gets a lot of things done and is often considered legitimate. This book may be read as a defence of area studies approaches. Without the insights that grew from applying our area studies skills, we would still be constrained by highly stylised notions of the state, which bear little resemblance to the state’s actual workings. The struggle against corruption is a long-term political process. Instead of trying to depoliticize it, we believe the key to progress is greater popular participation. With contributions from Simon Butt, Robert Cribb, Howard Dick, Michele Ford, Jun Honna, Tim Lindsey, Lenore Lyons, John McCarthy, Ross McLeod, Marcus Mietzner, Jeremy Mulholland, Gerben Nooteboom, J Danang Widoyoko and Ian Wilson. This book is the result of a series of workshops supported, among others, by the Australian-Netherlands Research Collaboration (ANRC).
By providing a systematic analysis of how international law is incorporated and implemented in over two dozen states, this book analyzes how the international order and national legal systems interact with each other. It highlights the mutual influence of international and domestic legal systems and how changes in each are modifying the other.
The more international law, taken as a global answer to global problems, intrudes into domestic legal systems, the more it takes on the role and function of domestic law. This raises a separation of powers question regarding law–making powers. This book considers that specific issue. In contrast to other studies on domestic courts applying international law, its constitutional orientation focuses on the presumptions concerning the distribution of state power. It collects and examines relevant decisions regarding treaties and customary international law from four leading legal systems, the US, the UK, France, and the Netherlands. Those decisions reveal that institutional and conceptual allegiances to constitutional structures render it difficult for courts to see their mandates and powers in terms other than exclusively national. Constitutionalism generates an inevitable dualism between international law and national law, one which cannot necessarily be overcome by express constitutional provisions accommodating international law. Valuable for academics and practitioners in the fields of international and constitutional law.
Constitutional Engagement in a Transnational Era explores how transnational phenomena affect our understanding of the role of constitutions and of courts in deciding constitutional cases. In it, Vicki Jackson looks at constitutional court decisions from around the world, and identifying postures of resistance, convergence or engagement with international and foreign law.
Harmonised and uniform international laws are now being spread across different jurisdictions and fields of law, bringing with them an increasing body of scholarship on practical problems and theoretical dimensions. This comprehensive and insightful book focuses on the contributions to the development and understanding of the critical theory of harmonisation. The contributing authors address a variety of different subjects concerned with harmonisation and the application of legal rules resulting from harmonisation efforts. This study is written by leading scholars engaged in different aspects of harmonisation, and covers both regional harmonisation within the EU and regional human rights treaties, as well as harmonisation with international treaty obligations. With comparative analysis that contributes to the development of a more general theory on the harmonisation process, this timely book will appeal to EU and international law scholars and practitioners, as well as those looking to future legal harmonisation in other regions in Asia, Latin America and Africa.